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144144Democracy Now! - War on Terroren-USDemocracy Now! - War on TerrorExporting Torture: Former Chicago Police Detective Tied to Brutality at Guantánamohttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/2/26/exporting_torture_former_chicago_police_detective
tag:democracynow.org,2015-02-26:en/story/5c5181 NERMEEN SHAIKH : We&#8217;re speaking to Spencer Ackerman of The Guardian . Last week, he published a story headlined &quot;Bad Lieutenant: American Police Brutality, Exported from Chicago to Guantánamo.&quot; The article looked at Richard Zuley, who used torture to extract confessions from minorities for years in Chicago and then went on to work at Guantánamo. This is a clip of Lathierial Boyd, one of the innocent men Zuley interrogated in Chicago.
LATHIERIAL BOYD : I was mounted to the wall and floor. I remained in that room through two lineups. And I remember I asked—after that second lineup, I asked Zuley if anybody had picked me out of the lineup, and he said no. And I said, &quot;See, I told you. You got the wrong guy. I haven&#8217;t done anything.&quot; He smiled at me and said, &quot;We&#8217;re charging you anyway.&quot;
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Lathierial Boyd served 23 years in prison before he was found to be wrongfully convicted. So, Spencer, can you talk more about Richard Zuley and how you came across his police record?
SPENCER ACKERMAN : Sure. The Guardian excerpted the Guantánamo Bay manuscript of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, whose interrogation at Guantánamo Bay is just one of the most brutal that we&#8217;ve ever known about thus far. And my editor asked me if I would go through the manuscript ahead of the excerpt and just see if there were any news stories we might want to do out of it. And one of the footnotes mentioned that in government reports and other sources, including a really fantastic piece of reporting by Jess Bravin of The Wall Street Journal , his 2013 book, The Terror Courts , the lead interrogator during the most intense torturous period of Slahi&#8217;s interrogation was a Chicago police officer named Richard Zuley.
And I thought, &quot;Well, I had never heard about a U.S. police officer being in any U.S. military or intelligence interrogation facility. What must his record in Chicago have been like?&quot; and, from there, found some court cases, including Lathierial Boyd&#8217;s federal civil rights case against Zuley, got in contact with his lawyer, found out about some more cases and started pulling records to find out what this guy&#8217;s record in Chicago was. And we found some really ominous parallels between how he policed Chicago streets and what he did in Guantánamo Bay torture centers.
AMY GOODMAN : And what happened with Lathierial ultimately?
SPENCER ACKERMAN : Lathierial Boyd, after 23 years of being put in prison on a murder that there was never any physical evidence that he committed, was found in 2013 by an investigation from the Cook County state&#8217;s attorney to have his conviction voided, as it was completely baseless, and they found there was no evidence that could justify keeping him in prison, even though he had served 23 years.
AMY GOODMAN : And the suit?
SPENCER ACKERMAN : And now, after he got out, they file—Lathierial Boyd and his attorney, Kathleen Zellner, filed a civil rights suit to try and get some kind of justice for Lathierial and, as well, try and create both more disclosure around the way Chicago police practices have operated, including Richard Zuley.
AMY GOODMAN : So, let&#8217;s go back to one of Zuley&#8217;s victims—this one, though, not in Chicago, in Guantánamo—Mohamedou Ould Slahi. During interrogations at Guantánamo, you report—approved then by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld—Slahi detailed the treatment in his memoir, which was just published. In this clip from The Guardian &#8217;s video report about his case, we hear his lawyer Nancy Hollander and actor Dominic West reading from his diary.
NANCY HOLLANDER : Mohamedou was subjected to a whole list of torture techniques that had been approved by the secretary of defense.
YAHID OULD SLAHI : [translated] They told him they had taken my mother from Mauritania and put her in a single cell in Guantánamo. And if he didn&#8217;t give officials the information they expected, she would be severely tortured.
NANCY HOLLANDER : Significantly, they included what in Guantánamo was known as the &quot;frequent flyer program.&quot; And they called it that because they wouldn’t let people sleep. And they proceeded to torture him.
MOHAMEDOU OULD SLAHI : [read by Dominic West] &quot;Blindfold the [expletive] if he tries to look.&quot; One of them hit me hard across the face, and quickly put the goggles on my eyes, ear muffs on my ears, and a small bag over my head. They tightened the chains around my ankles and my wrists; afterwards, I started to bleed. I thought they were going to execute me.
AMY GOODMAN : Mohamedou Ould Slahi remains at Guantánamo to this day and is yet to be charged with a crime. Spencer Ackerman, if you can talk about this and then also talk about whether the Chicago media is following up on these explosive reports where you&#8217;re making these connections?
SPENCER ACKERMAN : Yeah, so, it wasn&#8217;t just that the military couldn&#8217;t charge—or anyone couldn&#8217;t charge—Slahi with anything. Military investigators for the prosecution found that the reason why they couldn&#8217;t charge him with anything is what Richard Zuley did to Mohamedou Slahi, that the torture that Slahi was subjected to by the United States of America so tainted all of the evidence in this case that it became fundamentally unchargeable. In 2010, by the way, a federal judge ruled in Slahi&#8217;s habeas case that he had to be let go. Barack Obama&#8217;s Justice Department has appealed that decision, and that&#8217;s why Slahi is still in Guantánamo Bay today.
Now, as we were reporting this, we found that there were these connections between the way Zuley tortured Slahi and his police work as a Chicago detective. Slahi was short-shackled for extended periods of time. We found that happened to Lathierial Boyd. We found that happened to Benita Johnson. We found that happened to Andre Griggs. Johnson and Griggs, for instance, were shackled for between, they say, 24 and 30 hours in their cases. Andre Griggs was suffering through heroin withdrawal during that time, and he wasn&#8217;t given medication for that.
This was done as a method to try and get Griggs and Johnson to confess to crimes that they say they never committed. Those confessions formed the vast majority of the evidence against them. And this was something that we saw, as well, Zuley doing at Guantánamo. He told Slahi, &quot;You can either be a witness, or you can be a defendant.&quot; All he had to do was confess. Slahi&#8217;s torture, much like with Griggs and with Johnson, was so bad that eventually he just said, &quot;I&#8217;ll sign whatever you put in front of me.&quot; As he put it in his book, &quot;If you want to buy, I am selling.&quot;
Before that happened, as just one of the methods that Zuley employed, Zuley threatened to have his mother taken to Guantánamo Bay in what he described as its all-male environment. I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s particularly hard to understand that to be a rape threat.
AMY GOODMAN : Very quickly, before we go, Chicago has a long history of this issue of police torture. This month, the notorious Chicago police commander, Jon Burge, was released from a halfway house after he served four-and-a-half years for lying under oath. But what he&#8217;s accused of was leading a torture ring that interrogated more than a hundred African-American men in Chicago in the 1970s and &#39;80s. They routinely used electric shock, suffocation with plastic bags, typewriter covers, among other methods, to extract confessions from men who were later shown to be innocent. The Chicago Torture Justice Memorials Project documented some of the men&#39;s stories. This is Shadeed Mu&#8217;min.
SHADEED MU&#8217;MIN: He handcuffed me real tight, know what I&#8217;m saying? He cut my circulation off. He went out of the room and stayed, I guess, for about an hour, and then came back and tried to talk to me. What could I tell him, you know, about the robbery? I told him, &quot;I couldn&#8217;t tell you anything about no robbery. I know nothing about what you&#8217;re talking about.&quot; And he said then that, &quot;Oh, you&#8217;re going to play tough.&quot; Said, &quot;You will tell us, before you leave here, what we want to know.&quot; Said, &quot;I&#8217;ve been known to get out of peoples what I want.&quot; He got real upset and said, &quot;You will talk, you black mother [bleep].&quot; He said, &quot;I&#8217;ll make you talk, or kill you as I want.&quot; So, I still don&#8217;t understand. So he—in anger, he rushed to the typewriter and grabbed the plastic cover off there and just crammed it down over my head. And it&#8217;s like he was a madman. And several officers were helping him. But I was trying to get my arms out from behind the chair, but I couldn&#8217;t do anything. And I passed out. And like I say, he gave me a breath of air. And I came to, conscious. And he—&quot;You ready to talk?&quot; And I said, &quot;I don&#8217;t have anything to tell you still.&quot; So he do it again. The third time, out of the third time, that&#8217;s when I told him, I said, &quot;I&#8217;ll tell you whatever you want to know, man. Just don&#8217;t do this no more.&quot;
AMY GOODMAN : That&#8217;s Shadeed Mu&#8217;min speaking about his interrogation by former Chicago police commander Jon Burge. Statistics compiled by the People&#8217;s Law Office show Chicago has paid at least $64 million in settlements and judgments in civil rights cases related to Burge&#8217;s police abuses alone. The Chicago Reader reported some of the Burge techniques may have been learned when he was in Vietnam, where he served as a military policeman. Spencer, we&#8217;re going to end on Jon Burge. Any connection to Richard Zuley?
SPENCER ACKERMAN : So, not directly. Even though they served in Chicago around the same time, supposedly, from everyone I&#8217;ve talked to, including Flint Taylor, who&#8217;s Burge&#8217;s probably chief legal investigator, doesn&#8217;t seem like they actually worked together. Nevertheless, there is a context for this in Chicago. There&#8217;s a long-standing tradition of police abuses, primarily against African-American residents of Chicago. It sits now, with what we&#8217;re reporting, at this uncomfortable intersection between both that long and nefarious history of abuse against African Americans, primarily, in Chicago and this post-9/11 era in which secret detentions, longtime interrogations without charge, and so forth, seem to be now increasingly influencing domestic police work.
AMY GOODMAN : And is the Chicago media picking it up, especially in this time of a mayoral re-election race?
SPENCER ACKERMAN : They seem to be running reports based primarily on the Chicago police denial given to us. We&#8217;ll see if that changes.
AMY GOODMAN : Spencer Ackerman, national security editor at The Guardian , where he&#8217;s published a two-part series on police abuse in Chicago, &quot;The Disappeared: Chicago Police Detain Americans at Abuse-Laden &#39;Black Site&#39;&quot; and &quot;Bad Lieutenant: American Police Brutality, Exported from Chicago to Guantánamo.&quot; We&#8217;ll link to them at our website, as well as your interview , as well, with Victoria Suter.
This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . When we come back, we go to northern Iraq, to Erbil, to speak with journalist Patrick Cockburn. Stay with us. NERMEENSHAIKH: We’re speaking to Spencer Ackerman of The Guardian. Last week, he published a story headlined "Bad Lieutenant: American Police Brutality, Exported from Chicago to Guantánamo." The article looked at Richard Zuley, who used torture to extract confessions from minorities for years in Chicago and then went on to work at Guantánamo. This is a clip of Lathierial Boyd, one of the innocent men Zuley interrogated in Chicago.

LATHIERIALBOYD: I was mounted to the wall and floor. I remained in that room through two lineups. And I remember I asked—after that second lineup, I asked Zuley if anybody had picked me out of the lineup, and he said no. And I said, "See, I told you. You got the wrong guy. I haven’t done anything." He smiled at me and said, "We’re charging you anyway."

NERMEENSHAIKH: Lathierial Boyd served 23 years in prison before he was found to be wrongfully convicted. So, Spencer, can you talk more about Richard Zuley and how you came across his police record?

SPENCERACKERMAN: Sure. The Guardian excerpted the Guantánamo Bay manuscript of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, whose interrogation at Guantánamo Bay is just one of the most brutal that we’ve ever known about thus far. And my editor asked me if I would go through the manuscript ahead of the excerpt and just see if there were any news stories we might want to do out of it. And one of the footnotes mentioned that in government reports and other sources, including a really fantastic piece of reporting by Jess Bravin of The Wall Street Journal, his 2013 book, The Terror Courts, the lead interrogator during the most intense torturous period of Slahi’s interrogation was a Chicago police officer named Richard Zuley.

And I thought, "Well, I had never heard about a U.S. police officer being in any U.S. military or intelligence interrogation facility. What must his record in Chicago have been like?" and, from there, found some court cases, including Lathierial Boyd’s federal civil rights case against Zuley, got in contact with his lawyer, found out about some more cases and started pulling records to find out what this guy’s record in Chicago was. And we found some really ominous parallels between how he policed Chicago streets and what he did in Guantánamo Bay torture centers.

AMYGOODMAN: And what happened with Lathierial ultimately?

SPENCERACKERMAN: Lathierial Boyd, after 23 years of being put in prison on a murder that there was never any physical evidence that he committed, was found in 2013 by an investigation from the Cook County state’s attorney to have his conviction voided, as it was completely baseless, and they found there was no evidence that could justify keeping him in prison, even though he had served 23 years.

AMYGOODMAN: And the suit?

SPENCERACKERMAN: And now, after he got out, they file—Lathierial Boyd and his attorney, Kathleen Zellner, filed a civil rights suit to try and get some kind of justice for Lathierial and, as well, try and create both more disclosure around the way Chicago police practices have operated, including Richard Zuley.

AMYGOODMAN: So, let’s go back to one of Zuley’s victims—this one, though, not in Chicago, in Guantánamo—Mohamedou Ould Slahi. During interrogations at Guantánamo, you report—approved then by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld—Slahi detailed the treatment in his memoir, which was just published. In this clip from The Guardian’s video report about his case, we hear his lawyer Nancy Hollander and actor Dominic West reading from his diary.

NANCYHOLLANDER: Mohamedou was subjected to a whole list of torture techniques that had been approved by the secretary of defense.

YAHIDOULDSLAHI: [translated] They told him they had taken my mother from Mauritania and put her in a single cell in Guantánamo. And if he didn’t give officials the information they expected, she would be severely tortured.

NANCYHOLLANDER: Significantly, they included what in Guantánamo was known as the "frequent flyer program." And they called it that because they wouldn’t let people sleep. And they proceeded to torture him.

MOHAMEDOUOULDSLAHI: [read by Dominic West] "Blindfold the [expletive] if he tries to look." One of them hit me hard across the face, and quickly put the goggles on my eyes, ear muffs on my ears, and a small bag over my head. They tightened the chains around my ankles and my wrists; afterwards, I started to bleed. I thought they were going to execute me.

AMYGOODMAN: Mohamedou Ould Slahi remains at Guantánamo to this day and is yet to be charged with a crime. Spencer Ackerman, if you can talk about this and then also talk about whether the Chicago media is following up on these explosive reports where you’re making these connections?

SPENCERACKERMAN: Yeah, so, it wasn’t just that the military couldn’t charge—or anyone couldn’t charge—Slahi with anything. Military investigators for the prosecution found that the reason why they couldn’t charge him with anything is what Richard Zuley did to Mohamedou Slahi, that the torture that Slahi was subjected to by the United States of America so tainted all of the evidence in this case that it became fundamentally unchargeable. In 2010, by the way, a federal judge ruled in Slahi’s habeas case that he had to be let go. Barack Obama’s Justice Department has appealed that decision, and that’s why Slahi is still in Guantánamo Bay today.

Now, as we were reporting this, we found that there were these connections between the way Zuley tortured Slahi and his police work as a Chicago detective. Slahi was short-shackled for extended periods of time. We found that happened to Lathierial Boyd. We found that happened to Benita Johnson. We found that happened to Andre Griggs. Johnson and Griggs, for instance, were shackled for between, they say, 24 and 30 hours in their cases. Andre Griggs was suffering through heroin withdrawal during that time, and he wasn’t given medication for that.

This was done as a method to try and get Griggs and Johnson to confess to crimes that they say they never committed. Those confessions formed the vast majority of the evidence against them. And this was something that we saw, as well, Zuley doing at Guantánamo. He told Slahi, "You can either be a witness, or you can be a defendant." All he had to do was confess. Slahi’s torture, much like with Griggs and with Johnson, was so bad that eventually he just said, "I’ll sign whatever you put in front of me." As he put it in his book, "If you want to buy, I am selling."

Before that happened, as just one of the methods that Zuley employed, Zuley threatened to have his mother taken to Guantánamo Bay in what he described as its all-male environment. I don’t think it’s particularly hard to understand that to be a rape threat.

AMYGOODMAN: Very quickly, before we go, Chicago has a long history of this issue of police torture. This month, the notorious Chicago police commander, Jon Burge, was released from a halfway house after he served four-and-a-half years for lying under oath. But what he’s accused of was leading a torture ring that interrogated more than a hundred African-American men in Chicago in the 1970s and '80s. They routinely used electric shock, suffocation with plastic bags, typewriter covers, among other methods, to extract confessions from men who were later shown to be innocent. The Chicago Torture Justice Memorials Project documented some of the men's stories. This is Shadeed Mu’min.

SHADEED MU’MIN: He handcuffed me real tight, know what I’m saying? He cut my circulation off. He went out of the room and stayed, I guess, for about an hour, and then came back and tried to talk to me. What could I tell him, you know, about the robbery? I told him, "I couldn’t tell you anything about no robbery. I know nothing about what you’re talking about." And he said then that, "Oh, you’re going to play tough." Said, "You will tell us, before you leave here, what we want to know." Said, "I’ve been known to get out of peoples what I want." He got real upset and said, "You will talk, you black mother [bleep]." He said, "I’ll make you talk, or kill you as I want." So, I still don’t understand. So he—in anger, he rushed to the typewriter and grabbed the plastic cover off there and just crammed it down over my head. And it’s like he was a madman. And several officers were helping him. But I was trying to get my arms out from behind the chair, but I couldn’t do anything. And I passed out. And like I say, he gave me a breath of air. And I came to, conscious. And he—"You ready to talk?" And I said, "I don’t have anything to tell you still." So he do it again. The third time, out of the third time, that’s when I told him, I said, "I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, man. Just don’t do this no more."

AMYGOODMAN: That’s Shadeed Mu’min speaking about his interrogation by former Chicago police commander Jon Burge. Statistics compiled by the People’s Law Office show Chicago has paid at least $64 million in settlements and judgments in civil rights cases related to Burge’s police abuses alone. The Chicago Reader reported some of the Burge techniques may have been learned when he was in Vietnam, where he served as a military policeman. Spencer, we’re going to end on Jon Burge. Any connection to Richard Zuley?

SPENCERACKERMAN: So, not directly. Even though they served in Chicago around the same time, supposedly, from everyone I’ve talked to, including Flint Taylor, who’s Burge’s probably chief legal investigator, doesn’t seem like they actually worked together. Nevertheless, there is a context for this in Chicago. There’s a long-standing tradition of police abuses, primarily against African-American residents of Chicago. It sits now, with what we’re reporting, at this uncomfortable intersection between both that long and nefarious history of abuse against African Americans, primarily, in Chicago and this post-9/11 era in which secret detentions, longtime interrogations without charge, and so forth, seem to be now increasingly influencing domestic police work.

AMYGOODMAN: And is the Chicago media picking it up, especially in this time of a mayoral re-election race?

SPENCERACKERMAN: They seem to be running reports based primarily on the Chicago police denial given to us. We’ll see if that changes.

This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. When we come back, we go to northern Iraq, to Erbil, to speak with journalist Patrick Cockburn. Stay with us.

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Thu, 26 Feb 2015 00:00:00 -0500Copenhagen Attack Witness Inna Shevchenko Debates Scholar Tariq Ramadan on Religion and Free Speechhttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/2/16/copenhagen_attack_witness_inna_shevchenko_debates
tag:democracynow.org,2015-02-16:en/story/524630 NERMEEN SHAIKH : Danish police have shot and killed a man that they believe carried out attacks on a synagogue and an event promoting free speech in Copenhagen on Saturday. Local media identified the suspect as 22-year-old Omar al-Hussein, who was born and raised in Denmark. According to Danish television, he had been released from prison just weeks earlier. Danish police have also charged two other people with aiding the gunman. The bloodshed began on Saturday when a gunman attempted to shoot his way into a café hosting a discussion on art, blasphemy and freedom of expression. The BBC aired audio from the event at the moment of the shooting.
INNA SHEVCHENKO : I realize that every time we talk about activity of those people, there will be always, &quot;Yes, it is freedom of speech, but...&quot; And the turning point is &quot;but.&quot; Why do we still say &quot;but&quot; when we—
[gunfire]
AMY GOODMAN : You are listening to an audio recording from Saturday&#8217;s shooting in Copenhagen. That first voice you heard, just before the gunfire, was Inna Shevchenko, a leader of the international women&#8217;s protest group Femen. She&#8217;ll join us on the show in a moment. Also speaking at the event was the Swedish artist Lars Vilks, the presumed target of the attacks, who has received death threats for depicting the head of the Prophet Muhammad on a dog. Vilks was unharmed in the attack, but a Danish film director named Finn Nørgaard was shot dead. Three police officers were also injured.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Hours later, the gunman attacked a synagogue, killing a guard outside and injuring another two police officers. The attacks in Copenhagen came a month after gunmen attacked the offices of the newspaper Charlie Hebdo , killing 12 people in Paris. France&#8217;s ambassador to Denmark, François Zimeray, was at the café when Saturday&#8217;s attack took place.
FRANÇOIS ZIMERAY : [translated] I don&#8217;t know if they are strong words, but this is simply what one feels when you hear bullets and see their impact. I was very impressed today to be able to calmly see what I went through yesterday in these few seconds. In these moments, you think it&#8217;s all over. You don&#8217;t have any feelings. You don&#8217;t think of anything, but try and understand what&#8217;s happening. And what I understood then was that the same event was taking place as in Paris. And probably, if the Danish police didn&#8217;t succeed in—five policemen wounded—didn&#8217;t succeed in their job, I wouldn&#8217;t be here today.
AMY GOODMAN : To talk more about the Copenhagen attacks, we&#8217;re joined by two guests. Inna Shevchenko is with us. She was speaking at the free speech event in Copenhagen when the attack took place Saturday, leader of the international women&#8217;s group Femen, which often demonstrates topless against what they perceive as manifestations of patriarchy, especially dictatorship, religion and the sex industry. She is speaking to us now from Paris, where she has just gone from Copenhagen.
And we&#8217;re joined once again by Tariq Ramadan, professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford University, author of a number of influential books on Islam and the West, including Western Muslims and the Future of Islam and also the book In the Footsteps of the Prophet: Lessons from the Life of Muhammad . Professor Ramadan was named by Time magazine as one of the most important innovators of the 21st century. He&#8217;s joining us from Doha, Qatar.
But I want to go first to our guest in Paris, Inna Shevchenko. Describe the scene on Saturday. What exactly were you talking about when the shots opened fire? And explain where they came from.
INNA SHEVCHENKO : Thank you for having me, first. Well, when everything happened in Copenhagen, when terrorists entered the place, just a few seconds before, I was mentioning that very often it is an illusion that we can fully enjoy freedom of speech. I was sitting on the stage together with Lars Vilks and one of the organizers of the event. And then I mentioned such a phenomenon as &quot;but&quot; when we talk about freedom of speech. And as you can hear on the record, once I mentioned that there will be always opinion, &quot;Yes, OK, we are fine with freedom of speech, but...&quot; and then the shots started. And ironically, I think, it started in this event, because I think that those shots and this attack was definitely a huge &quot;but&quot; to our freedom of speech.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : And, Inna, has it been established that the Swedish cartoonist who was on the panel with you—was he the presumed target? Has that been made certain?
INNA SHEVCHENKO : Well, police didn&#8217;t give us any information, because they simply do not have it. Lars Vilks personally explained that he thinks he was a target of the event. But as we talked later with police, and police explained that the target of the event could be either Lars Vilks or also the reason to attack this event could be also the presence of one of the representatives of Femen, who is receiving also lots of threats a lot. But I think that right now we should not talk about who exactly personally was a target. The target was the idea, the idea that all of us were carrying in that room, the idea of freedom of speech and freedom of expression and being free to celebrate it, to enjoy, to laugh, to speak about it, to scream about it in the streets. So the target of those extremists are our ideas.
AMY GOODMAN : Tariq Ramadan, speaking to us from Doha, Qatar, if you could respond to what has taken place right now in Copenhagen? We last talked to you , of course, after the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris.
TARIQ RAMADAN : Look, once again, it&#8217;s exactly the same scenario, and we have to take the same clear position and condemn what happened. And I really think that the target of this young guy was the event itself, what was the—which is the freedom of expression and things that are perceived as insulting Islam. And what we have to say as Muslims, what we have to say as Muslim scholars and in world, that this is betraying our principles, and this cannot be acceptable. So, once again, it&#8217;s the clear position that we have to take.
And beyond this, I think that instead of putting religions on one side and people supporting freedom of expression, we need to understand, and not to be misled or mistaken about our common enemies, that there are people, dogmatic minds, going towards violence and promoting violence, that are against freedom of expression. And we have to be clear that these are our enemies. And for me, as a Muslim, what is happening in—because you were mentioning this in your headlines—what is happening in Syria and Libya, this is all against the principles of our religion, so the Muslims should be clear on that, while at the same time we have to have the big picture and to say, &quot;Let us come together to be against the use of religions to kill.&quot;
But at the same time, and it&#8217;s not a &quot;but&quot; that is undermining the condemnation, but stressing the fact that the picture is very complex, and we also have to be clear about the killing of Muslims and not to be quiet when, for example, 200 people have been killed in Nigeria, or the three people who have been killed in North Carolina, and it took two days for President Obama to come and to say something about it. And the silence here is not acceptable. So it&#8217;s not this against that, but we have to be not—we should not be selective in our condemnation.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : And, Tariq Ramadan, you&#8217;ve been following the position of Muslims in Europe for decades. Is it your sense, as some claim, that more and more young Muslims in Europe are turning to a more radical form of Islam and also violent acts like the one we just witnessed in Copenhagen?
TARIQ RAMADAN : I think that there is something completely new that we are—it&#8217;s very difficult for us to understand, is this attraction towards what is happening through the social media. And yes, there are more people being involved with it. We never had such a thing as people going—we had, yes, of course, people going to Bosnia or going to al-Shishan or going to even Palestine, but it was—they were few, it&#8217;s a handful number. So I don&#8217;t think that we had this before. Now, at the same time, we have to be very cautious. It&#8217;s not because they are killing and they are getting the headlines that they are something, you know, that is representing Muslims. It&#8217;s a tiny minority. It&#8217;s on the margin. The people are not even going to the mosques. They are not within the community. This young guy was just in prison a few weeks ago. And it&#8217;s the same in France. We have to be very cautious. It might be that we have more young people being involved, but still this is completely disconnected from the Muslim communities in the West.
And then, because you are asking this question, without trying to find justification, because it&#8217;s not justifiable, we need to come to some of the reasons that we can find, to go upstream and to try to solve the problem—so, for example, anything that has to do with a better teaching of Islam. We need institutionalizing the Muslim presence in the West and in Europe by having a teaching vision that is clear on the things that could be accepted within the diversity of the Islamic teaching and the things that are unacceptable. So this kind of informal teaching that we have of Islam and this in-between, it&#8217;s not helping.
On the other side, we also have to deal with political issues, because when, in Europe, we are presenting that they are at war with our values, the people are in touch with the international scene, and they are seeing what is happening, and sometimes which kind of international policies are promoting—are promoted by the West, the United States or the European countries. And we also have to be clear that we are giving some value to this political analysis. It&#8217;s not as if nothing is happening around the world; people are being killed, and European and Western powers are involved in wars around the world.
AMY GOODMAN : Inna Shevchenko, if you could weigh in here? Also, comment on the fact that at this Krudttønden café where the free speech event took place, people stayed to continue the event, is that right, afterwards? Again, a Danish filmmaker was killed in this attack, Finn Nørgaard.
INNA SHEVCHENKO : That&#8217;s right. That&#8217;s right. We were—as we gathered there to celebrate freedom of speech, we continued to celebrate freedom of speech, with certain conditions that we all have right now. We have new conditions for being able to celebrate and to enjoy freedom of speech, and we have to be—we have to know that today we can be targeted. We can hear sounds of Kalashnikov around us whenever we draw or laugh or speak, enjoying freedom of speech, and there are new conditions today, and we have to accept it.
But what—you know, what happened at that event, it was horrible. It was horrible to hear shots of Kalashnikov just behind the door of the room where you were simply talking about pluralism and about being able to explain—to express whatever ideas you care without harming physically anybody. And then we heard shots. And, of course, the situation was terrible, and people were running and trying to hide under the tables and in the corners. It was chaotic.
Then the shots finished, and the situation—we understood what happened. And one of the participants proposed to continue the debates. People, the audience, were so proud to be on that side of the fight, not to be—not to represent a dogmatic side of the fight that, unfortunately, I should mention, and unfortunately for Tariq Ramadan, unfortunately, religions do represent dogmatic part of this discussion. And we represented at that event, and millions of people today in Europe are expressing that they represent, liberalism and pluralism. And what—right now we are in the middle of ideological war between pluralism and dogmatism. And unfortunately for all of us, religion does play a big, big part in dogmatism and in dogmatic side supporting it. Even though, again, I&#8217;m not going to please, maybe, Tariq Ramadan, I definitely see how many religious people also become victims of those extremists, but I think that we should not deny the other side of religion that is giving to us today. And unfortunately, this is not the most peaceful side.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Inna, you&#8217;ve also suggested that Europe—Tariq Ramadan, why don&#8217;t you respond to what Inna said?
TARIQ RAMADAN : I think that the starting point of our discussion is not to be dogmatically liberal against religion. What I&#8217;m hearing now, it&#8217;s a dogmatic mind rejecting all the religions and all the dogmatic religious cultures or religious teachings as being dogmatic. That&#8217;s very superficial. And I&#8217;m very, very cautious with some dogmatic liberal minds saying freedom of expression is on our side. Please, I don&#8217;t think that you are going to solve the problem. And this is the problem I have with your organization, Femen. You are dogmatic in the way you are rejecting all religions. You don&#8217;t see that within religions and the religious traditions you have millions, hundreds of millions of people who are open-minded and trying their best and they are supporting freedom of expression. So don&#8217;t be like this, because by promoting this mindset, you are creating the problems; you are not solving or trying to find solutions.
So, once again, I would say, I am on the side of freedom of speech. And then, this, I think, we have to promote. And I said this, you know, at the very beginning. I was myself involved in the discussion about the cartoon crisis in Denmark at the very beginning. I was there, and I met with journalists. Even the journal, the newspaper, the Jyllands-Posten , they published my book on the prophet that you mentioned in English, they published it in Danish, because they wanted to show we are also—we want to give this right picture, we are not only against. So I think that we need to find new alliances and not this binary vision, &quot;it&#8217;s religions versus open-minded people.&quot; No, it&#8217;s open-minded people against all type of instrumentalization, and even sometimes the liberal values of instrumentalizing in a very dogmatic way, as I&#8217;ve said.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Inna Shevchenko, could you respond to what Tariq said and also elaborate on the suggestion you&#8217;ve made that Europe needs to change its policies in light of what&#8217;s happened? And you&#8217;ve spoken of ideological warfare. Could you elaborate on that?
INNA SHEVCHENKO : Yes, first of all, I want to respond to Tariq. And, you know, I think that definitely what you are doing well, you are trying to turn my words right now around. And I think that what we all are saying and what is the main idea of what we all are caring and what we were caring at this event, that we all should be able to express our ideas, whether you are religious or not. And to say that we are rejecting all religions is definitely to be superficial, as you say. We&#8217;d never reject religious people, who can care liberal ideas, and there are plenty of them, including a lot of friends that I have who are religious—and, as well, Muslim, who are supporting secular ideas and who do agree that Charlie Hebdo did have a right to draw Muhammad.
And as I know—as far as I know, you don&#8217;t agree that this is a freedom of speech. You call it insulting. And in one of the texts of your blog, you said that those terrorists are victims of society. And I think this is a big danger in your speeches. I think that you definitely objectively should recognize the side of all liberals, that we provide the solution that respects opinion and right to believe, to think, to speak about whatever they want. Religious you are or not, you have right to express your ideas. You have right to talk about that.
But what we propose, we don&#8217;t carry Kalashnikovs in our hands. And one small group, even small group of our community, do not care—do not carry Kalashnikovs in our hands. What we do carry, we carry a much more powerful weapon: We carry our ideas of respecting right of everybody to express their ideas. And we propose a real solution. We don&#8217;t say the situation is too complex and we should just sit and be desperate about it. What we do say, we say that we have to educate each other, that everybody has a right to laugh at whoever, whether Muhammad, it is Jesus or Marine Le Pen or Obama, whoever. We have right to laugh. We have right to criticize. We have right to express our opinion. And this right should be respected. And this right should not be—should not be criticized and said as—and named as superficial, not at all.
AMY GOODMAN : Professor Tariq Ramadan, your response?
TARIQ RAMADAN : No, no, no, once again, this is a distortion of what I said. What I said is superficial is to put religions on one side and then to come to say, &quot;I have nothing against religious people, but I am against religions.&quot; I have been following many of your statements about religions and connecting religions with patriarchy, with very narrow-minded people. That&#8217;s fine, if we start with what you are saying now, that we are coming together, and we are promoting the point that it&#8217;s freedom of speech. And yes, freedom of speech means that we cannot deny the fact that if I feel insulted, that&#8217;s fine. The question is not if I feel insulted; the question is: What am I doing out of it? And what I&#8217;m saying is that I take a critical distance. I let the people speak the way they want. And this is the starting point of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech doesn&#8217;t mean that I agree and I&#8217;m happy with all what I hear, but I acknowledge the fact that the people have the right to say. That&#8217;s the point, and you cannot deny this.
Now, the question here is, very often in all the discussions that we had and through your organization is to be aggressive in the way you are promoting it. It&#8217;s not helping. That&#8217;s the point that I&#8217;m making. It&#8217;s not—if you say to people, you know, &quot;I respect religious people I don&#8217;t like, and I reject religions,&quot; I think that, once again, that&#8217;s your right, you can say it, but it&#8217;s putting the people into boxes in a way which is what I am saying is superficial.
Now, the point that I want to make—you are celebrating freedom of speech. Yes, we have the right to laugh, and this should be a right, yes, I&#8217;ve said that. Now, I don&#8217;t want a young guy, 22 years old, to put us in a situation where there is no way for us to have a bigger discussion, which this discussion is. He was wrong. He betrayed the Islamic principles. We have to say this in a clear way. Now I want the big picture and say: What are the reasons that are pushing some people to go that way? And what is our common response to be?
NERMEEN SHAIKH : I want to turn—Tariq Ramadan, if you&#8217;ll allow me, I want to ask about some of the reasons, some of the speculation for the reasons that people are—young Muslims in Europe are turning to violence. The French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, visited Copenhagen Sunday to express solidarity after the attacks, that were reminiscent of the attacks in Paris on Charlie Hebdo , the satirical weekly newspaper. Cazeneuve said more must be done to prevent vulnerable members of society from, quote, being &quot;brainwashed&quot; by Internet propaganda.
BERNARD CAZENEUVE : [translated] This morning, I saw the same sadness I witnessed back in Paris in January in people&#8217;s terrified eyes, the same sadness, the same dread, the same dignity and the same mediation and the same sorrow. In the face of terrorism, we are first and foremost united by feelings like those of important democrats, those attached to democracy, to the values of the founding fathers of the European Union. When we call for more regulation for Internet in order to prevent websites and blogs promoting terrorism from brainwashing the most vulnerable citizens in our countries—and doing so efficiently, I have to say—this is realistic. We are adapting our strategies in the face of a very acute problem, and we need to do that with lucidity and to get ready to face a real threat for a long time.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : That was French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve. You each have about 30 seconds to respond. Inna Shevchenko, could you comment on what the minister said?
INNA SHEVCHENKO : Sure, of course. We should—
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Oh, I&#8217;m afraid we&#8217;ve lost Inna for the moment. Tariq Ramadan, could you comment on what the minister said and explain whether you think it is Internet propaganda that&#8217;s seducing young, vulnerable Muslims in Europe?
TARIQ RAMADAN : No, that&#8217;s clear. He is right on one thing, is that now we know that there is the Internet propaganda, and this is attracting some of the young Muslims, even converts and things like this. But this is not the only reason, and it cannot only be this. We also have to deal with domestic policies in the West, where you have this frustration. Anyone can use this to instrumentalize religion as a weapons against the other, let alone the discussion on the international scene. You know, when France is saying, &quot;We are not at war,&quot; yes, you are not at war with them, but you are at war in the Middle East, and you are involved in political actions and wars around, so you also have to deal with this. So, this is not to justify what was done, but this is to explain that if we don&#8217;t deal with the reasons, we are missing the point.
AMY GOODMAN : On that note, we&#8217;re going to—we&#8217;re going to have to wrap up, although I do think perhaps we have Inna right at this moment.
INNA SHEVCHENKO : Yes, can I come back?
AMY GOODMAN : If you could respond for 30 seconds, yes, to what the French interior minister said?
INNA SHEVCHENKO : Do you have me right now?
AMY GOODMAN : Yes, we hear you fine.
INNA SHEVCHENKO : Yeah, sorry, sorry. Yeah, well, you know, I think that generally to say—again, let me still come back a little bit to the main point and to what Tariq said and mentioned, and then go back to Bernard Cazeneuve. You know, the thing is that right now I clearly do hear that Tariq Ramadan is condemning violence of terrorists, who are unfortunately doing it in the name of his religion. And right now we can see how many of those terrorists are appearing. And I think that one of the reasons why it is happening right now, because so many people, including Tariq Ramadan, are spending much more time to condemn cartoons of Charlie Hebdo or Lars Vilks than to criticize and then to say directly to terrorists that the part of Islam that is saying that you have to fight infidels and everybody else who doesn&#8217;t belong to this religion and this idea should be forgotten or denied, clearly. They should not be said just they are terrorists and they&#8217;re not part of our community. There are a few brave Muslims who are saying, great people who are—great thinkers who are saying, &quot;Yes, they are Muslims. They do represent our religion. And we should clearly say that this part of the religion should be mortified and should be denied.&quot; The solution is—just to say they are not Muslims and they don&#8217;t belong to Islam, this is just—
AMY GOODMAN : Inna Shevchenko, we&#8217;re going to have to leave it there. I want to thank you for being with us. She was speaking at the free speech event in Copenhagen&#8217;s Krudttønden café when the attack took place on Saturday, a leader of the international women&#8217;s protest group Femen, which often demonstrates topless against what they perceive as manifestations of patriarchy. She was joining us now from Paris, where she&#8217;s gone from Copenhagen. And I want to thank Professor Tariq Ramadan, professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford University, author of a number of books, speaking to us from Doha, Qatar.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we&#8217;re going to look at a new report on Islamophobia in the United States, then to North Carolina to speak with Reverend Barber, who has led the Moral Mondays protests; this weekend, the largest protest to date against Islamophobia in the South. Stay with us. NERMEENSHAIKH: Danish police have shot and killed a man that they believe carried out attacks on a synagogue and an event promoting free speech in Copenhagen on Saturday. Local media identified the suspect as 22-year-old Omar al-Hussein, who was born and raised in Denmark. According to Danish television, he had been released from prison just weeks earlier. Danish police have also charged two other people with aiding the gunman. The bloodshed began on Saturday when a gunman attempted to shoot his way into a café hosting a discussion on art, blasphemy and freedom of expression. The BBC aired audio from the event at the moment of the shooting.

INNASHEVCHENKO: I realize that every time we talk about activity of those people, there will be always, "Yes, it is freedom of speech, but..." And the turning point is "but." Why do we still say "but" when we—

[gunfire]

AMYGOODMAN: You are listening to an audio recording from Saturday’s shooting in Copenhagen. That first voice you heard, just before the gunfire, was Inna Shevchenko, a leader of the international women’s protest group Femen. She’ll join us on the show in a moment. Also speaking at the event was the Swedish artist Lars Vilks, the presumed target of the attacks, who has received death threats for depicting the head of the Prophet Muhammad on a dog. Vilks was unharmed in the attack, but a Danish film director named Finn Nørgaard was shot dead. Three police officers were also injured.

NERMEENSHAIKH: Hours later, the gunman attacked a synagogue, killing a guard outside and injuring another two police officers. The attacks in Copenhagen came a month after gunmen attacked the offices of the newspaper Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people in Paris. France’s ambassador to Denmark, François Zimeray, was at the café when Saturday’s attack took place.

FRANÇOIS ZIMERAY: [translated] I don’t know if they are strong words, but this is simply what one feels when you hear bullets and see their impact. I was very impressed today to be able to calmly see what I went through yesterday in these few seconds. In these moments, you think it’s all over. You don’t have any feelings. You don’t think of anything, but try and understand what’s happening. And what I understood then was that the same event was taking place as in Paris. And probably, if the Danish police didn’t succeed in—five policemen wounded—didn’t succeed in their job, I wouldn’t be here today.

AMYGOODMAN: To talk more about the Copenhagen attacks, we’re joined by two guests. Inna Shevchenko is with us. She was speaking at the free speech event in Copenhagen when the attack took place Saturday, leader of the international women’s group Femen, which often demonstrates topless against what they perceive as manifestations of patriarchy, especially dictatorship, religion and the sex industry. She is speaking to us now from Paris, where she has just gone from Copenhagen.

And we’re joined once again by Tariq Ramadan, professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford University, author of a number of influential books on Islam and the West, including Western Muslims and the Future of Islam and also the book In the Footsteps of the Prophet: Lessons from the Life of Muhammad. Professor Ramadan was named by Time magazine as one of the most important innovators of the 21st century. He’s joining us from Doha, Qatar.

But I want to go first to our guest in Paris, Inna Shevchenko. Describe the scene on Saturday. What exactly were you talking about when the shots opened fire? And explain where they came from.

INNASHEVCHENKO: Thank you for having me, first. Well, when everything happened in Copenhagen, when terrorists entered the place, just a few seconds before, I was mentioning that very often it is an illusion that we can fully enjoy freedom of speech. I was sitting on the stage together with Lars Vilks and one of the organizers of the event. And then I mentioned such a phenomenon as "but" when we talk about freedom of speech. And as you can hear on the record, once I mentioned that there will be always opinion, "Yes, OK, we are fine with freedom of speech, but..." and then the shots started. And ironically, I think, it started in this event, because I think that those shots and this attack was definitely a huge "but" to our freedom of speech.

NERMEENSHAIKH: And, Inna, has it been established that the Swedish cartoonist who was on the panel with you—was he the presumed target? Has that been made certain?

INNASHEVCHENKO: Well, police didn’t give us any information, because they simply do not have it. Lars Vilks personally explained that he thinks he was a target of the event. But as we talked later with police, and police explained that the target of the event could be either Lars Vilks or also the reason to attack this event could be also the presence of one of the representatives of Femen, who is receiving also lots of threats a lot. But I think that right now we should not talk about who exactly personally was a target. The target was the idea, the idea that all of us were carrying in that room, the idea of freedom of speech and freedom of expression and being free to celebrate it, to enjoy, to laugh, to speak about it, to scream about it in the streets. So the target of those extremists are our ideas.

AMYGOODMAN: Tariq Ramadan, speaking to us from Doha, Qatar, if you could respond to what has taken place right now in Copenhagen? We last talked to you, of course, after the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris.

TARIQRAMADAN: Look, once again, it’s exactly the same scenario, and we have to take the same clear position and condemn what happened. And I really think that the target of this young guy was the event itself, what was the—which is the freedom of expression and things that are perceived as insulting Islam. And what we have to say as Muslims, what we have to say as Muslim scholars and in world, that this is betraying our principles, and this cannot be acceptable. So, once again, it’s the clear position that we have to take.

And beyond this, I think that instead of putting religions on one side and people supporting freedom of expression, we need to understand, and not to be misled or mistaken about our common enemies, that there are people, dogmatic minds, going towards violence and promoting violence, that are against freedom of expression. And we have to be clear that these are our enemies. And for me, as a Muslim, what is happening in—because you were mentioning this in your headlines—what is happening in Syria and Libya, this is all against the principles of our religion, so the Muslims should be clear on that, while at the same time we have to have the big picture and to say, "Let us come together to be against the use of religions to kill."

But at the same time, and it’s not a "but" that is undermining the condemnation, but stressing the fact that the picture is very complex, and we also have to be clear about the killing of Muslims and not to be quiet when, for example, 200 people have been killed in Nigeria, or the three people who have been killed in North Carolina, and it took two days for President Obama to come and to say something about it. And the silence here is not acceptable. So it’s not this against that, but we have to be not—we should not be selective in our condemnation.

NERMEENSHAIKH: And, Tariq Ramadan, you’ve been following the position of Muslims in Europe for decades. Is it your sense, as some claim, that more and more young Muslims in Europe are turning to a more radical form of Islam and also violent acts like the one we just witnessed in Copenhagen?

TARIQRAMADAN: I think that there is something completely new that we are—it’s very difficult for us to understand, is this attraction towards what is happening through the social media. And yes, there are more people being involved with it. We never had such a thing as people going—we had, yes, of course, people going to Bosnia or going to al-Shishan or going to even Palestine, but it was—they were few, it’s a handful number. So I don’t think that we had this before. Now, at the same time, we have to be very cautious. It’s not because they are killing and they are getting the headlines that they are something, you know, that is representing Muslims. It’s a tiny minority. It’s on the margin. The people are not even going to the mosques. They are not within the community. This young guy was just in prison a few weeks ago. And it’s the same in France. We have to be very cautious. It might be that we have more young people being involved, but still this is completely disconnected from the Muslim communities in the West.

And then, because you are asking this question, without trying to find justification, because it’s not justifiable, we need to come to some of the reasons that we can find, to go upstream and to try to solve the problem—so, for example, anything that has to do with a better teaching of Islam. We need institutionalizing the Muslim presence in the West and in Europe by having a teaching vision that is clear on the things that could be accepted within the diversity of the Islamic teaching and the things that are unacceptable. So this kind of informal teaching that we have of Islam and this in-between, it’s not helping.

On the other side, we also have to deal with political issues, because when, in Europe, we are presenting that they are at war with our values, the people are in touch with the international scene, and they are seeing what is happening, and sometimes which kind of international policies are promoting—are promoted by the West, the United States or the European countries. And we also have to be clear that we are giving some value to this political analysis. It’s not as if nothing is happening around the world; people are being killed, and European and Western powers are involved in wars around the world.

AMYGOODMAN: Inna Shevchenko, if you could weigh in here? Also, comment on the fact that at this Krudttønden café where the free speech event took place, people stayed to continue the event, is that right, afterwards? Again, a Danish filmmaker was killed in this attack, Finn Nørgaard.

INNASHEVCHENKO: That’s right. That’s right. We were—as we gathered there to celebrate freedom of speech, we continued to celebrate freedom of speech, with certain conditions that we all have right now. We have new conditions for being able to celebrate and to enjoy freedom of speech, and we have to be—we have to know that today we can be targeted. We can hear sounds of Kalashnikov around us whenever we draw or laugh or speak, enjoying freedom of speech, and there are new conditions today, and we have to accept it.

But what—you know, what happened at that event, it was horrible. It was horrible to hear shots of Kalashnikov just behind the door of the room where you were simply talking about pluralism and about being able to explain—to express whatever ideas you care without harming physically anybody. And then we heard shots. And, of course, the situation was terrible, and people were running and trying to hide under the tables and in the corners. It was chaotic.

Then the shots finished, and the situation—we understood what happened. And one of the participants proposed to continue the debates. People, the audience, were so proud to be on that side of the fight, not to be—not to represent a dogmatic side of the fight that, unfortunately, I should mention, and unfortunately for Tariq Ramadan, unfortunately, religions do represent dogmatic part of this discussion. And we represented at that event, and millions of people today in Europe are expressing that they represent, liberalism and pluralism. And what—right now we are in the middle of ideological war between pluralism and dogmatism. And unfortunately for all of us, religion does play a big, big part in dogmatism and in dogmatic side supporting it. Even though, again, I’m not going to please, maybe, Tariq Ramadan, I definitely see how many religious people also become victims of those extremists, but I think that we should not deny the other side of religion that is giving to us today. And unfortunately, this is not the most peaceful side.

NERMEENSHAIKH: Inna, you’ve also suggested that Europe—Tariq Ramadan, why don’t you respond to what Inna said?

TARIQRAMADAN: I think that the starting point of our discussion is not to be dogmatically liberal against religion. What I’m hearing now, it’s a dogmatic mind rejecting all the religions and all the dogmatic religious cultures or religious teachings as being dogmatic. That’s very superficial. And I’m very, very cautious with some dogmatic liberal minds saying freedom of expression is on our side. Please, I don’t think that you are going to solve the problem. And this is the problem I have with your organization, Femen. You are dogmatic in the way you are rejecting all religions. You don’t see that within religions and the religious traditions you have millions, hundreds of millions of people who are open-minded and trying their best and they are supporting freedom of expression. So don’t be like this, because by promoting this mindset, you are creating the problems; you are not solving or trying to find solutions.

So, once again, I would say, I am on the side of freedom of speech. And then, this, I think, we have to promote. And I said this, you know, at the very beginning. I was myself involved in the discussion about the cartoon crisis in Denmark at the very beginning. I was there, and I met with journalists. Even the journal, the newspaper, the Jyllands-Posten, they published my book on the prophet that you mentioned in English, they published it in Danish, because they wanted to show we are also—we want to give this right picture, we are not only against. So I think that we need to find new alliances and not this binary vision, "it’s religions versus open-minded people." No, it’s open-minded people against all type of instrumentalization, and even sometimes the liberal values of instrumentalizing in a very dogmatic way, as I’ve said.

NERMEENSHAIKH: Inna Shevchenko, could you respond to what Tariq said and also elaborate on the suggestion you’ve made that Europe needs to change its policies in light of what’s happened? And you’ve spoken of ideological warfare. Could you elaborate on that?

INNASHEVCHENKO: Yes, first of all, I want to respond to Tariq. And, you know, I think that definitely what you are doing well, you are trying to turn my words right now around. And I think that what we all are saying and what is the main idea of what we all are caring and what we were caring at this event, that we all should be able to express our ideas, whether you are religious or not. And to say that we are rejecting all religions is definitely to be superficial, as you say. We’d never reject religious people, who can care liberal ideas, and there are plenty of them, including a lot of friends that I have who are religious—and, as well, Muslim, who are supporting secular ideas and who do agree that Charlie Hebdo did have a right to draw Muhammad.

And as I know—as far as I know, you don’t agree that this is a freedom of speech. You call it insulting. And in one of the texts of your blog, you said that those terrorists are victims of society. And I think this is a big danger in your speeches. I think that you definitely objectively should recognize the side of all liberals, that we provide the solution that respects opinion and right to believe, to think, to speak about whatever they want. Religious you are or not, you have right to express your ideas. You have right to talk about that.

But what we propose, we don’t carry Kalashnikovs in our hands. And one small group, even small group of our community, do not care—do not carry Kalashnikovs in our hands. What we do carry, we carry a much more powerful weapon: We carry our ideas of respecting right of everybody to express their ideas. And we propose a real solution. We don’t say the situation is too complex and we should just sit and be desperate about it. What we do say, we say that we have to educate each other, that everybody has a right to laugh at whoever, whether Muhammad, it is Jesus or Marine Le Pen or Obama, whoever. We have right to laugh. We have right to criticize. We have right to express our opinion. And this right should be respected. And this right should not be—should not be criticized and said as—and named as superficial, not at all.

AMYGOODMAN: Professor Tariq Ramadan, your response?

TARIQRAMADAN: No, no, no, once again, this is a distortion of what I said. What I said is superficial is to put religions on one side and then to come to say, "I have nothing against religious people, but I am against religions." I have been following many of your statements about religions and connecting religions with patriarchy, with very narrow-minded people. That’s fine, if we start with what you are saying now, that we are coming together, and we are promoting the point that it’s freedom of speech. And yes, freedom of speech means that we cannot deny the fact that if I feel insulted, that’s fine. The question is not if I feel insulted; the question is: What am I doing out of it? And what I’m saying is that I take a critical distance. I let the people speak the way they want. And this is the starting point of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean that I agree and I’m happy with all what I hear, but I acknowledge the fact that the people have the right to say. That’s the point, and you cannot deny this.

Now, the question here is, very often in all the discussions that we had and through your organization is to be aggressive in the way you are promoting it. It’s not helping. That’s the point that I’m making. It’s not—if you say to people, you know, "I respect religious people I don’t like, and I reject religions," I think that, once again, that’s your right, you can say it, but it’s putting the people into boxes in a way which is what I am saying is superficial.

Now, the point that I want to make—you are celebrating freedom of speech. Yes, we have the right to laugh, and this should be a right, yes, I’ve said that. Now, I don’t want a young guy, 22 years old, to put us in a situation where there is no way for us to have a bigger discussion, which this discussion is. He was wrong. He betrayed the Islamic principles. We have to say this in a clear way. Now I want the big picture and say: What are the reasons that are pushing some people to go that way? And what is our common response to be?

NERMEENSHAIKH: I want to turn—Tariq Ramadan, if you’ll allow me, I want to ask about some of the reasons, some of the speculation for the reasons that people are—young Muslims in Europe are turning to violence. The French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, visited Copenhagen Sunday to express solidarity after the attacks, that were reminiscent of the attacks in Paris on Charlie Hebdo, the satirical weekly newspaper. Cazeneuve said more must be done to prevent vulnerable members of society from, quote, being "brainwashed" by Internet propaganda.

BERNARDCAZENEUVE: [translated] This morning, I saw the same sadness I witnessed back in Paris in January in people’s terrified eyes, the same sadness, the same dread, the same dignity and the same mediation and the same sorrow. In the face of terrorism, we are first and foremost united by feelings like those of important democrats, those attached to democracy, to the values of the founding fathers of the European Union. When we call for more regulation for Internet in order to prevent websites and blogs promoting terrorism from brainwashing the most vulnerable citizens in our countries—and doing so efficiently, I have to say—this is realistic. We are adapting our strategies in the face of a very acute problem, and we need to do that with lucidity and to get ready to face a real threat for a long time.

NERMEENSHAIKH: That was French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve. You each have about 30 seconds to respond. Inna Shevchenko, could you comment on what the minister said?

INNASHEVCHENKO: Sure, of course. We should—

NERMEENSHAIKH: Oh, I’m afraid we’ve lost Inna for the moment. Tariq Ramadan, could you comment on what the minister said and explain whether you think it is Internet propaganda that’s seducing young, vulnerable Muslims in Europe?

TARIQRAMADAN: No, that’s clear. He is right on one thing, is that now we know that there is the Internet propaganda, and this is attracting some of the young Muslims, even converts and things like this. But this is not the only reason, and it cannot only be this. We also have to deal with domestic policies in the West, where you have this frustration. Anyone can use this to instrumentalize religion as a weapons against the other, let alone the discussion on the international scene. You know, when France is saying, "We are not at war," yes, you are not at war with them, but you are at war in the Middle East, and you are involved in political actions and wars around, so you also have to deal with this. So, this is not to justify what was done, but this is to explain that if we don’t deal with the reasons, we are missing the point.

AMYGOODMAN: On that note, we’re going to—we’re going to have to wrap up, although I do think perhaps we have Inna right at this moment.

INNASHEVCHENKO: Yes, can I come back?

AMYGOODMAN: If you could respond for 30 seconds, yes, to what the French interior minister said?

INNASHEVCHENKO: Do you have me right now?

AMYGOODMAN: Yes, we hear you fine.

INNASHEVCHENKO: Yeah, sorry, sorry. Yeah, well, you know, I think that generally to say—again, let me still come back a little bit to the main point and to what Tariq said and mentioned, and then go back to Bernard Cazeneuve. You know, the thing is that right now I clearly do hear that Tariq Ramadan is condemning violence of terrorists, who are unfortunately doing it in the name of his religion. And right now we can see how many of those terrorists are appearing. And I think that one of the reasons why it is happening right now, because so many people, including Tariq Ramadan, are spending much more time to condemn cartoons of Charlie Hebdo or Lars Vilks than to criticize and then to say directly to terrorists that the part of Islam that is saying that you have to fight infidels and everybody else who doesn’t belong to this religion and this idea should be forgotten or denied, clearly. They should not be said just they are terrorists and they’re not part of our community. There are a few brave Muslims who are saying, great people who are—great thinkers who are saying, "Yes, they are Muslims. They do represent our religion. And we should clearly say that this part of the religion should be mortified and should be denied." The solution is—just to say they are not Muslims and they don’t belong to Islam, this is just—

AMYGOODMAN: Inna Shevchenko, we’re going to have to leave it there. I want to thank you for being with us. She was speaking at the free speech event in Copenhagen’s Krudttønden café when the attack took place on Saturday, a leader of the international women’s protest group Femen, which often demonstrates topless against what they perceive as manifestations of patriarchy. She was joining us now from Paris, where she’s gone from Copenhagen. And I want to thank Professor Tariq Ramadan, professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford University, author of a number of books, speaking to us from Doha, Qatar.

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we’re going to look at a new report on Islamophobia in the United States, then to North Carolina to speak with Reverend Barber, who has led the Moral Mondays protests; this weekend, the largest protest to date against Islamophobia in the South. Stay with us.

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Mon, 16 Feb 2015 00:00:00 -0500Endless War? Obama Sends Congress Expansive Anti-ISIS Measure 6 Months After Bombing Beganhttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/2/12/endless_war_obama_sends_congress_expansive
tag:democracynow.org,2015-02-12:en/story/01c3db NERMEEN SHAIKH : President Obama has sent Congress a formal request to authorize military force against the Islamic State six months after the U.S. began bombing Iraq and Syria. The resolution imposes a three-year limit on U.S. operations, but it does not put any geographic limits on the military campaign. It also opens the door for ground combat operations in some circumstances. Obama spoke at the White House Wednesday, flanked by Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry and outgoing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA : Today my administration submitted a draft resolution to Congress to authorize the use of force against ISIL . I want to be very clear about what it does and what it does not do. This resolution reflects our core objective: to destroy ISIL . It supports the comprehensive strategy that we&#8217;ve been pursuing with our allies and our partners: a systemic and sustained campaign of airstrikes against ISIL in Iraq and Syria; support and training for local forces on the ground, including the moderate Syrian opposition; preventing ISIL attacks in the region and beyond, including by foreign terrorist fighters who try to threaten our countries; regional and international support for an inclusive Iraqi government that unites the Iraqi people and strengthens Iraqi forces against ISIL ; humanitarian assistance for the innocent civilians of Iraq and Syria, who are suffering so terribly under ISIL&#8217;s reign of horror.
AMY GOODMAN : Questions over the language in the resolution have been raised by both hawkish Republicans and antiwar Democrats in Congress. The resolution&#8217;s broad language covers military action against the Islamic State as well as, quote, &quot;individuals and organizations fighting for, on behalf of, or alongside [ ISIS ] or any closely-related successor entity in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners.&quot; The resolution also leaves in place the open-ended Authorization for Use of Military Force Congress enacted one week after the September 11th attacks, which has been used to justify U.S. action in Somalia, in Pakistan, in Yemen and beyond.
Joining us now from San Francisco is Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, co-founder of RootsAction.org , author of many books, including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death .
Norman, welcome to Democracy Now! Can you talk about this latest effort by President Obama to get war authorization?
NORMAN SOLOMON : Well, unfortunately, in political terms, it represents a sort of repetition compulsion disorder, back to the future from an administration that came in saying it was going to dispense with the concept—or at least the phraseology—of a war on terror, an administration that even today, through the president&#8217;s statement, is again asserting that it&#8217;s against endless war, and yet both the statement from the president yesterday and the resolution—and, for that matter, the White House policy—is explicitly endless, perpetual war. And that&#8217;s the kind of policy we&#8217;re getting.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : And, Norm, can you explain why he placed a three-year limit then on U.S. operations?
NORMAN SOLOMON : Window dressing, just a scam, just a way to give a sort of a fig leaf to the people called antiwar Democrats or some libertarian Republicans. But it&#8217;s just a way of sort of rowing the boat with a little bit of a deference to the right and left in Congress, that what it boils down to is kicking the war can down the road—a very bloody one, to put it mildly—and absolutely running a manipulative public relations campaign.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re hearing numbers like there are 200,000 members of ISIS , or people fighting, identifying themselves as ISIS . This number has just gone up astronomically. Is there any way to verify the kind of information that comes out at a time like this, when war is being voted on in Congress?
NORMAN SOLOMON : Well, historically, and in the present day, there is no way to verify whatsoever. You could depend on some inflation, to put it mildly. We also heard from the president yesterday that there were 2,000 airstrikes by the United States in the region, in the Middle East, in the last six months, but we don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s true at all. And in tandem with its war on whistleblowers and true investigative journalism, this administration is operating in overdrive as sort of a fog machine to try to keep from the American people realities of the war policy, because clearly this White House prefers the uninformed consent of the governed.
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Norm, could you comment on the timing of Obama&#8217;s request? It came just a day after American aid worker Kayla Mueller&#8217;s death was confirmed. He also mentioned her in his remarks.
NORMAN SOLOMON : Well, these terrible atrocities by the so-called Islamic State really provide fuel for the machinery of propaganda from the executive branch of the United States, clearly chomping at the bit to drag this country further into war. And I think it&#8217;s very symbolic that—and literally significant, as well—that the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force is not being challenged or proposed for ending by this administration. So, that very open-ended authorization right after 9/11 is one that the administration is embracing and trying to ride for all it can, essentially, in search of enemies. And if there are no geographical or conceptual or state boundaries that will define this war coming out of the U.S. government, then the search for enemies is open-ended and infinite.
AMY GOODMAN : I want to turn to Kofi Annan—
NORMAN SOLOMON : And I should add, not only a search for enemies that&#8217;s infinite, but the creation of enemies, because this administration not only preaches against endless war while doing more than any other presidency to make endless war policy, but this administration is second to none in creating enemies of the United States around the world. And so the spin cycle, the war cycle, the destructive cycle continues.
AMY GOODMAN : Norman Solomon, I wanted to turn to the former U.N. secretary-general, Kofi Annan. Over the weekend, he spoke at the Munich Security Conference, suggesting the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq created the Islamic State.
KOFI ANNAN : The second and much more proximate cause of the instability we are witnessing today was the invasion of Iraq in 2003. I spoke against it at the time, and I&#8217;m afraid my concerns have been proved well-founded. The folly of that fateful decision was compounded by post-invasion decisions. The wholesale disbandment of security forces, among other measures, poured hundreds of thousands of trained and disgruntled soldiers and policemen onto the streets.
AMY GOODMAN : That&#8217;s former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Norman Solomon, your response?
NORMAN SOLOMON : It&#8217;s a good point, but when you go back to that time—and I think, Amy, you and I spoke about the impending invasion of Iraq, you know, more than a decade ago—Kofi Annan could have been much stronger in his post at the United Nations in opposing it. And frankly, there are all too many people in Washington, as well, who in retrospect say what terrible tragedies are or have unfolded, but at the time, they don&#8217;t have a whole lot of backbone, they don&#8217;t challenge the administration. And years from now, we&#8217;re going to have people who were in Congress right now who will say what a terrible tragedy yesterday&#8217;s statement and offered resolution from the Obama White House was. But right now, we&#8217;re not hearing them speaking out very strongly. And it&#8217;s incumbent on all of us to speak out and stop this despicable push towards escalation of yet more war from the Obama White House.
AMY GOODMAN : Norman Solomon, we&#8217;re going to break and then come back to ask you about the suspension of Brian Williams for lying about Iraq, and we want to talk to you about the Sterling trial. Then we&#8217;re going to go on to talk about what happened in North Carolina near the University of North Carolina, the three young students, two sisters and one of their, well, new husband, who were just gunned down, the police say over a parking spot, their family says it&#8217;s hate crime. Stay with us. NERMEENSHAIKH: President Obama has sent Congress a formal request to authorize military force against the Islamic State six months after the U.S. began bombing Iraq and Syria. The resolution imposes a three-year limit on U.S. operations, but it does not put any geographic limits on the military campaign. It also opens the door for ground combat operations in some circumstances. Obama spoke at the White House Wednesday, flanked by Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry and outgoing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

PRESIDENTBARACKOBAMA: Today my administration submitted a draft resolution to Congress to authorize the use of force against ISIL. I want to be very clear about what it does and what it does not do. This resolution reflects our core objective: to destroy ISIL. It supports the comprehensive strategy that we’ve been pursuing with our allies and our partners: a systemic and sustained campaign of airstrikes against ISIL in Iraq and Syria; support and training for local forces on the ground, including the moderate Syrian opposition; preventing ISIL attacks in the region and beyond, including by foreign terrorist fighters who try to threaten our countries; regional and international support for an inclusive Iraqi government that unites the Iraqi people and strengthens Iraqi forces against ISIL; humanitarian assistance for the innocent civilians of Iraq and Syria, who are suffering so terribly under ISIL’s reign of horror.

AMYGOODMAN: Questions over the language in the resolution have been raised by both hawkish Republicans and antiwar Democrats in Congress. The resolution’s broad language covers military action against the Islamic State as well as, quote, "individuals and organizations fighting for, on behalf of, or alongside [ISIS] or any closely-related successor entity in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners." The resolution also leaves in place the open-ended Authorization for Use of Military Force Congress enacted one week after the September 11th attacks, which has been used to justify U.S. action in Somalia, in Pakistan, in Yemen and beyond.

Joining us now from San Francisco is Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, co-founder of RootsAction.org, author of many books, including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.

Norman, welcome to Democracy Now! Can you talk about this latest effort by President Obama to get war authorization?

NORMANSOLOMON: Well, unfortunately, in political terms, it represents a sort of repetition compulsion disorder, back to the future from an administration that came in saying it was going to dispense with the concept—or at least the phraseology—of a war on terror, an administration that even today, through the president’s statement, is again asserting that it’s against endless war, and yet both the statement from the president yesterday and the resolution—and, for that matter, the White House policy—is explicitly endless, perpetual war. And that’s the kind of policy we’re getting.

NERMEENSHAIKH: And, Norm, can you explain why he placed a three-year limit then on U.S. operations?

NORMANSOLOMON: Window dressing, just a scam, just a way to give a sort of a fig leaf to the people called antiwar Democrats or some libertarian Republicans. But it’s just a way of sort of rowing the boat with a little bit of a deference to the right and left in Congress, that what it boils down to is kicking the war can down the road—a very bloody one, to put it mildly—and absolutely running a manipulative public relations campaign.

AMYGOODMAN: We’re hearing numbers like there are 200,000 members of ISIS, or people fighting, identifying themselves as ISIS. This number has just gone up astronomically. Is there any way to verify the kind of information that comes out at a time like this, when war is being voted on in Congress?

NORMANSOLOMON: Well, historically, and in the present day, there is no way to verify whatsoever. You could depend on some inflation, to put it mildly. We also heard from the president yesterday that there were 2,000 airstrikes by the United States in the region, in the Middle East, in the last six months, but we don’t know if that’s true at all. And in tandem with its war on whistleblowers and true investigative journalism, this administration is operating in overdrive as sort of a fog machine to try to keep from the American people realities of the war policy, because clearly this White House prefers the uninformed consent of the governed.

NERMEENSHAIKH: Norm, could you comment on the timing of Obama’s request? It came just a day after American aid worker Kayla Mueller’s death was confirmed. He also mentioned her in his remarks.

NORMANSOLOMON: Well, these terrible atrocities by the so-called Islamic State really provide fuel for the machinery of propaganda from the executive branch of the United States, clearly chomping at the bit to drag this country further into war. And I think it’s very symbolic that—and literally significant, as well—that the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force is not being challenged or proposed for ending by this administration. So, that very open-ended authorization right after 9/11 is one that the administration is embracing and trying to ride for all it can, essentially, in search of enemies. And if there are no geographical or conceptual or state boundaries that will define this war coming out of the U.S. government, then the search for enemies is open-ended and infinite.

AMYGOODMAN: I want to turn to Kofi Annan—

NORMANSOLOMON: And I should add, not only a search for enemies that’s infinite, but the creation of enemies, because this administration not only preaches against endless war while doing more than any other presidency to make endless war policy, but this administration is second to none in creating enemies of the United States around the world. And so the spin cycle, the war cycle, the destructive cycle continues.

AMYGOODMAN: Norman Solomon, I wanted to turn to the former U.N. secretary-general, Kofi Annan. Over the weekend, he spoke at the Munich Security Conference, suggesting the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq created the Islamic State.

KOFIANNAN: The second and much more proximate cause of the instability we are witnessing today was the invasion of Iraq in 2003. I spoke against it at the time, and I’m afraid my concerns have been proved well-founded. The folly of that fateful decision was compounded by post-invasion decisions. The wholesale disbandment of security forces, among other measures, poured hundreds of thousands of trained and disgruntled soldiers and policemen onto the streets.

NORMANSOLOMON: It’s a good point, but when you go back to that time—and I think, Amy, you and I spoke about the impending invasion of Iraq, you know, more than a decade ago—Kofi Annan could have been much stronger in his post at the United Nations in opposing it. And frankly, there are all too many people in Washington, as well, who in retrospect say what terrible tragedies are or have unfolded, but at the time, they don’t have a whole lot of backbone, they don’t challenge the administration. And years from now, we’re going to have people who were in Congress right now who will say what a terrible tragedy yesterday’s statement and offered resolution from the Obama White House was. But right now, we’re not hearing them speaking out very strongly. And it’s incumbent on all of us to speak out and stop this despicable push towards escalation of yet more war from the Obama White House.

AMYGOODMAN: Norman Solomon, we’re going to break and then come back to ask you about the suspension of Brian Williams for lying about Iraq, and we want to talk to you about the Sterling trial. Then we’re going to go on to talk about what happened in North Carolina near the University of North Carolina, the three young students, two sisters and one of their, well, new husband, who were just gunned down, the police say over a parking spot, their family says it’s hate crime. Stay with us.

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Thu, 12 Feb 2015 00:00:00 -0500WATCH: President Obama Seeks Authorization for War Against Islamic Statehttp://www.democracynow.org/blog/2015/2/11/live_president_obama_seeks_authorization_for
tag:democracynow.org,2015-02-11:blog/b9c157 Watch President Obama&#8217;s live statement seeking congressional authorization for war against the Islamic State.
Join the discussion on the Democracy Now! Facebook page.
Full text of President Barack Obama&#8217;s letter to lawmakers accompanying draft war powers resolution:
To the Congress of the United States:
The so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ( ISIL ) poses a threat to the people and stability of Iraq, Syria, and the broader Middle East, and to U.S. national security. It threatens American personnel and facilities located in the region and is responsible for the deaths of U.S. citizens James Foley, Steven Sotloff, Abdul-Rahman Peter Kassig, and Kayla Mueller. If left unchecked, ISIL will pose a threat beyond the Middle East, including to the United States homeland.
I have directed a comprehensive and sustained strategy to degrade and defeat ISIL . As part of this strategy, U.S. military forces are conducting a systematic campaign of airstrikes against ISIL in Iraq and Syria. Although existing statutes provide me with the authority I need to take these actions, I have repeatedly expressed my commitment to working with the Congress to pass a bipartisan authorization for the use of military force ( AUMF ) against ISIL . Consistent with this commitment, I am submitting a draft AUMF that would authorize the continued use of military force to degrade and defeat ISIL .
My Administration&#8217;s draft AUMF would not authorize long-term, large-scale ground combat operations like those our Nation conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan. Local forces, rather than U.S. military forces, should be deployed to conduct such operations. The authorization I propose would provide the flexibility to conduct ground combat operations in other, more limited circumstances, such as rescue operations involving U.S. or coalition personnel or the use of special operations forces to take military action against ISIL leadership. It would also authorize the use of U.S. forces in situations where ground combat operations are not expected or intended, such as intelligence collection and sharing, missions to enable kinetic strikes, or the provision of operational planning and other forms of advice and assistance to partner forces.
Although my proposed AUMF does not address the 2001 AUMF , I remain committed to working with the Congress and the American people to refine, and ultimately repeal, the 2001 AUMF . Enacting an AUMF that is specific to the threat posed by ISIL could serve as a model for how we can work together to tailor the authorities granted by the 2001 AUMF .
I can think of no better way for the Congress to join me in supporting our Nation&#8217;s security than by enacting this legislation, which would show the world we are united in our resolve to counter the threat posed by ISIL .
Watch President Obama’s live statement seeking congressional authorization for war against the Islamic State.

Full text of President Barack Obama’s letter to lawmakers accompanying draft war powers resolution:

To the Congress of the United States:

The so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) poses a threat to the people and stability of Iraq, Syria, and the broader Middle East, and to U.S. national security. It threatens American personnel and facilities located in the region and is responsible for the deaths of U.S. citizens James Foley, Steven Sotloff, Abdul-Rahman Peter Kassig, and Kayla Mueller. If left unchecked, ISIL will pose a threat beyond the Middle East, including to the United States homeland.

I have directed a comprehensive and sustained strategy to degrade and defeat ISIL. As part of this strategy, U.S. military forces are conducting a systematic campaign of airstrikes against ISIL in Iraq and Syria. Although existing statutes provide me with the authority I need to take these actions, I have repeatedly expressed my commitment to working with the Congress to pass a bipartisan authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) against ISIL. Consistent with this commitment, I am submitting a draft AUMF that would authorize the continued use of military force to degrade and defeat ISIL.

My Administration’s draft AUMF would not authorize long-term, large-scale ground combat operations like those our Nation conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan. Local forces, rather than U.S. military forces, should be deployed to conduct such operations. The authorization I propose would provide the flexibility to conduct ground combat operations in other, more limited circumstances, such as rescue operations involving U.S. or coalition personnel or the use of special operations forces to take military action against ISIL leadership. It would also authorize the use of U.S. forces in situations where ground combat operations are not expected or intended, such as intelligence collection and sharing, missions to enable kinetic strikes, or the provision of operational planning and other forms of advice and assistance to partner forces.

Although my proposed AUMF does not address the 2001 AUMF, I remain committed to working with the Congress and the American people to refine, and ultimately repeal, the 2001 AUMF. Enacting an AUMF that is specific to the threat posed by ISIL could serve as a model for how we can work together to tailor the authorities granted by the 2001 AUMF.

I can think of no better way for the Congress to join me in supporting our Nation’s security than by enacting this legislation, which would show the world we are united in our resolve to counter the threat posed by ISIL.

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Wed, 11 Feb 2015 20:32:00 -0500Exclusive: Freed CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou Says "I Would Do It All Again" to Expose Torturehttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/2/9/exclusive_freed_cia_whistleblower_john_kiriakou
tag:democracynow.org,2015-02-09:en/story/ce8fa9 AMY GOODMAN : Today, a Democracy Now! radio and television broadcast exclusive. We spend the hour with John Kiriakou, the retired CIA agent who blew the whistle on torture. He&#8217;s just been released from prison. He&#8217;ll join us from his home in Virginia, where he remains under house arrest while finishing his two-and-a-half-year sentence. Shortly after his release last week, John Kiriakou tweeted a picture of himself at home with his smiling children, along with a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: &quot;Free at last. Free at least. Thank God Almighty. I&#8217;m free at last.&quot;
In January 2013, Kiriakou was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison. Under a plea deal, he admitted to a single count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by revealing the identity of a covert officer involved in the rendition, detention and interrogation program to a freelance reporter, who didn&#8217;t publish it. In return, prosecutors dropped charges against Kiriakou brought under the Espionage Act. In 2007, John Kiriakou became the first CIA official to publicly confirm and detail the Bush administration&#8217;s use of waterboarding when he spoke to ABC&#8217;s Brian Ross.
JOHN KIRIAKOU : At the time, I felt that waterboarding was something that we needed to do. And as time has passed, and as September 11th has—you know, has moved farther and farther back into history, I think I&#8217;ve changed my mind. And I think that waterboarding is probably something that we shouldn&#8217;t be in the business of doing.
BRIAN ROSS : Why do you say that now?
JOHN KIRIAKOU : Because we&#8217;re Americans, and we&#8217;re better than that.
AMY GOODMAN : John Kiriakou&#8217;s supporters say he was unfairly targeted in the Obama administration&#8217;s crackdown on government whistleblowers. Shortly after his release last week, the Government Accountability Project&#8217;s Jesselyn Radack issued a statement, saying, quote, &quot;Kiriakou is a dedicated public servant who became a political prisoner because he brought to light one of the darkest chapters in American history: the CIA&#8217;s ineffective, immoral and illegal torture program. ... [I]t is a welcome development that Kiriakou can serve the rest of his sentence at home with his family,&quot; she wrote.
Meanwhile, the federal prosecutor in the case, Neil MacBride, has defended the government&#8217;s handling of the case. He spoke after Kiriakou&#8217;s sentencing in January of 2013.
NEIL MacBRIDE: As the judge just said in court, today&#8217;s sentence should be a reminder to every individual who works for the government, who comes into the possession of closely held, sensitive information regarding the national defense or the identity of a covert agent, that it is critical that that information remain secure and not spill out into the public domain or be shared with others who don&#8217;t have authorized access to it.
AMY GOODMAN : For more, we go to Arlington, Virginia, where we&#8217;re joined by John Kiriakou. Again, he remains under house arrest as he completes his sentence. He spent 14 years at the CIA as an analyst and case officer. In 2002, he led the team that found Abu Zubaydah, a high-ranking member of al-Qaeda. He is a father of five. In 2010, Kiriakou published a memoir titled Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA&#8217;s War on Terror .
John Kiriakou, welcome back to Democracy Now! How does it feel to be out of prison?
JOHN KIRIAKOU : Utterly liberating. I actually had trouble falling asleep the first night home because I had grown so used to my bare mattress on a steel slab and the jingling of keys all night long. But I&#8217;ve finally adapted.
AMY GOODMAN : You&#8217;re not quite free yet, though, right, John? How long did you serve in jail?
JOHN KIRIAKOU : No.
AMY GOODMAN : And how long do you have under house arrest?
JOHN KIRIAKOU : I served 23 months in a low-security federal prison in Pennsylvania. I have three months of house arrest. And then, following house arrest, I am under what&#8217;s called supervised release, which is really probation, for another three years.
AMY GOODMAN : Talk about why you believe you were jailed.
JOHN KIRIAKOU : Oh, I am absolutely convinced, Amy, that I was jailed because of the torture debate. People leak information in Washington all the time, whether it&#8217;s on purpose or inadvertent. We&#8217;ve seen—we&#8217;ve seen people like former CIA Director Leon Panetta, former CIA Director General Petraeus, leaking classified information with impunity. And that has convinced me that I&#8217;m right when I say that my case was never about leaking. My case was about blowing the whistle on torture.
AMY GOODMAN : I wanted to turn to former Virginia Democratic Congressman Jim Moran, who took to the floor of the House of Representatives last year and called for President Obama to pardon you. Moran called you an &quot;American hero&quot; and a &quot;whistleblower.&quot; He said, quote, &quot;Kiriakou deserves a presidential pardon so his record can be cleared, just as this country is trying to heal from a dark chapter in its history.&quot; What is your response to that? You didn&#8217;t get that pardon, at least as of yet.
JOHN KIRIAKOU : No. No, I am deeply, deeply grateful for the work that Congressman Moran did. My only regret is that he&#8217;s retired now. He&#8217;s no longer in Congress. But he&#8217;s a very upstanding, very progressive and very decent man. I really appreciated his help. I&#8217;ve not formally asked for a pardon, and I probably won&#8217;t this year. But there seems to be some support growing for it. I&#8217;m always on the lookout for congressional support. And I hope that I can develop that through 2015 and then maybe go to the president sometime next year and ask for a pardon.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re going to break, and then we&#8217;re going to go back in time and talk about what you did, talk about the fact that you&#8217;re the only official related to the torture program, you blowing the whistle on torture, who has been jailed. We&#8217;re talking to John Kiriakou, who spent 14 years at the CIA as an analyst and case officer, exposed the Bush-era torture program, became the only official jailed in connection with it. We&#8217;ll be back with him at his home under house arrest in a moment.
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AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . I&#8217;m Amy Goodman. We&#8217;re spending the hour with John Kiriakou, under house arrest right now at his home in Arlington, Virginia, but he is out of jail. He spent 14 years at the CIA as an analyst and a case officer, exposed the Bush-era torture program, became the only official jailed in connection with it. In 2007, he became the first CIA official to publicly confirm the Bush administration&#8217;s use of waterboarding; in January 2013, sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison after pleading guilty to confirming the identity of a covert officer to a reporter, who didn&#8217;t publish it. Let&#8217;s go back in time to your experience with Abu Zubaydah, John Kiriakou. How did you come to meet him?
JOHN KIRIAKOU : I was the leader of a CIA group in Pakistan that conducted a series of 14 raids on suspected al-Qaeda safe houses around the central part of the country. And Abu Zubaydah happened to be in one of the houses that we raided. And after something of a gun battle, we captured him.
AMY GOODMAN : So, since your interview in 2007, it&#8217;s become known that Zubaydah was waterboarded at least 83 times and that he provided no useful information as a result. He remains imprisoned at Guantánamo without charge. His name appears more than a thousand times in the Senate report on torture that was released in December. Talk about what you know happened to him.
JOHN KIRIAKOU : Sure. Abu Zubaydah was shot three times while being captured, shot by Pakistani authorities—once in the thigh, once in the groin and once in the stomach—with an AK-47. He was very gravely wounded. And so, when he was rendered, when he was taken away from Pakistan, he was sent to a secret location, and the CIA sent a trauma surgeon from Johns Hopkins University Medical Center to this secret location to give him medical assistance. He underwent surgery. For some reason, he even had an eye removed. I&#8217;m not sure why that happened, but we know that now to be the case. And over the course of the next several months, he recovered from his gunshot wounds.
AMY GOODMAN : And talk about how you met him.
JOHN KIRIAKOU : Sure. When we first captured him, we took him to a hospital, a military hospital in Pakistan. He had lost so much blood, we needed to transfuse him. And he was initially in a coma. He came out of the coma a couple of times, and we were able, at first, to just exchange an initial comment, later on, in the next couple of days, to have short conversations. For example, when he first came out of his coma, he asked me for a glass of red wine. He was delirious. Later in the evening, he asked me if I would take the pillow and smother him. And then, the next day, we talked about poetry. We talked about Islam. We talked about the fact that he had never supported the attacks on the United States. He wanted to attack Israel.
AMY GOODMAN : And talk about what you learned happened to him from there.
JOHN KIRIAKOU : Well, he was sent from Pakistan to this secret location. And once he was healthy enough to withstand interrogation, a group of CIA interrogators—I&#8217;m sorry, a group of FBI interrogators interviewed him, appeared to have been successful in gathering some information, but then were replaced by CIA interrogators, that we&#8217;ve now learned were untrained, unprepared, and was subjected to waterboarding in addition to other torture techniques, placed into a cage. He had a fear of bugs, so they put him in a small box and put bugs in the box with him. He was subject to a cold cell, to lights on 24 hours a day, booming music so that he couldn&#8217;t sleep. There were several different things that the CIA did to him.
AMY GOODMAN : And your response to that?
JOHN KIRIAKOU : Torture is wrong under any circumstances. You know, we know from the Second World War, when the Justice Department was interrogating Nazi war criminals, we know that the establishment of a rapport, the establishment of a relationship with someone, results in actionable information, if that prisoner has actionable information which he&#8217;s willing to give. That wasn&#8217;t the case with Abu Zubaydah. He was beaten. He was waterboarded. He was subject to sleep deprivation. He had ice water poured on him in a 50-degree cell every several hours. The man just simply didn&#8217;t have any information to give.
AMY GOODMAN : When did you learn that? And when, John, did you decide to go public with this, to reveal this information?
JOHN KIRIAKOU : I learned initially that he had been waterboarded in the summer of 2002, at the end of the summer of 2002. And as I said in the 2007 interview with Brian Ross, I believed what the CIA was telling us, that he was being waterboarded, it was working, and we were gathering important, actionable intelligence that was saving American lives. It wasn&#8217;t until something like 2005 or 2006 that we realized that that just simply wasn&#8217;t true—he wasn&#8217;t producing any information—and that these techniques were horrific.
It was in 2007, Amy, that I decided to go public. President Bush said at the time, categorically, &quot;We do not torture prisoners. We are not waterboarding.&quot; And I knew that that was a lie. And he made it seem as though this was a rogue CIA officer who decided to pour water on people&#8217;s faces. And that simply wasn&#8217;t true. Torture—the entire torture program was approved by the president himself, and it was a very carefully planned-out program. So to say that it was rogue, it was just a bald-faced lie to the American people.
AMY GOODMAN : Late last year, graphic new details of the post-9/11 U.S. torture program came to light when the Senate Intelligence Committee released the 500-page summary of its investigation into the CIA . The report concluded the intelligence agency failed to disrupt a single plot despite torturing al-Qaeda and other captives in secret prisons worldwide from 2002 and 2006. Maybe you watched this from prison, John Kiriakou—
JOHN KIRIAKOU : I did, indeed.
AMY GOODMAN : —but this is Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, outlining the report&#8217;s key findings.
SEN . DIANNE FEINSTEIN : First, the CIA&#8217;s enhanced interrogation techniques were not an effective way to gather intelligence information. Second, the CIA provided extensive amounts of inaccurate information about the operation of the program and its effectiveness to the White House, the Department of Justice, Congress, the CIA inspector general, the media and the American public. Third, CIA&#8217;s management of the program was inadequate and deeply flawed. And fourth, the CIA program was far more brutal than people were led to believe.
AMY GOODMAN : Do you remember, when you heard this report in jail, where you were? I assume you watched Dianne Feinstein on the prison TV. And your thoughts about it?
JOHN KIRIAKOU : I did, indeed. I was sitting in the Central One Unit TV room watching it with bated breath. Let me say that Senator Feinstein is one of the CIA&#8217;s leading supporters on Capitol Hill. So for Dianne Feinstein to come out with a report as critical as this report was just shows you how wrongheaded the CIA torture program was.
AMY GOODMAN : So, the report comes out, and it details a list of torture methods used on prisoners—waterboarding, sexual abuse with broomsticks, what they call rectal feeding or rectal hydration. Prisoners were threatened with buzzing power drills. Some captives were deprived of sleep for up to 180 hours, at times with their hands shackled above their heads. The torture carried out at black sites in Afghanistan, Lithuania, Romania, Poland, Thailand, secret site at Guantánamo Naval Base known as Strawberry Fields. As this unveiled, it&#8217;s only you who went to jail around these issues. Your thoughts on this?
JOHN KIRIAKOU : I feel like I live in the Twilight Zone sometimes. When the report came out, like most other Americans, I was absolutely shocked and appalled at some of the details. Even inside the CIA , we didn&#8217;t know anything about rectal hydration—with hummus, no less—with sexual abuse or sexual assault using broomsticks. I mean, people didn&#8217;t even talk about those kinds of things in the hallway, so I was absolutely shocked hearing it.
This goes back to a point I made in 2013 on this wonderful program: We need to prosecute some of these cases. I understand that reasonable people can agree to disagree on whether or not case officers who really believed they were carrying out a legal activity should be prosecuted. I understand that. But what about case officers who took the law into their own hands or who flouted the law and raped prisoners with broomsticks or carried out rectal hydration with hummus? Those were not approved interrogation techniques. Why aren&#8217;t those officers being prosecuted? I think, at the very least, that&#8217;s where we should start the prosecutions.
AMY GOODMAN : I want to play for you comments President Obama made in 2009 about whether CIA officials involved in torture should be prosecuted. He appeared on the ABC News program This Week .
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA : I don&#8217;t believe that anybody is above the law. On the other hand, I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards. And part of my job is to make sure that—for example, at the CIA , you&#8217;ve got extraordinarily talented people who are working very hard to keep Americans safe. I don&#8217;t want them to suddenly feel like they&#8217;ve got to spend all their time looking over their shoulders and lawyering.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS : So, no 9/11 Commission with independent subpoena power?
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA : You know, we have not made final decisions, but my instinct is for us to focus on how do we make sure that, moving forward, we are doing the right thing.
AMY GOODMAN : That was President Obama right after he became president in 2009. Right after, he signed, well, what? One of his first executive orders, to close Guantánamo. Your thoughts on what he just said—
JOHN KIRIAKOU : Right.
AMY GOODMAN : —to George Stephanopoulos?
JOHN KIRIAKOU : Sure. I understand that President Obama is not going to seek the prosecution of the CIA leaders who carried out the torture, the case officers involved in the day-to-day torture program. I understand that. The lawyers at the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department, I understand. No problem. But what about the CIA officers who directly violated the law, who carried out interrogations that resulted in death? What about the torturers of Hassan Ghul? Hassan Ghul was killed during an interrogation session.
AMY GOODMAN : In Afghanistan.
JOHN KIRIAKOU : Those people should not be above the law. Correct, in Afghanistan. Those people should not be above the law. They committed crimes, whether in the United States or overseas. And those people should be prosecuted.
AMY GOODMAN : Instead, you were the only one who went to prison. Would you do what you did again, John?
JOHN KIRIAKOU : As crazy as it sounds, yes, I would. I would do it all over again. What has happened since that 2007 ABC News interview is that torture has been banned in the United States. It is no longer a part of U.S. government policy. And I&#8217;m proud to have played a role in that. If that cost me 23 months of my life, well, you know what? It was worth it.
AMY GOODMAN : Speaking to NBC&#8217;s Meet the Press in December, after the Senate torture report was released, former Vice President Dick Cheney said he would do it all again.
DICK CHENEY : I&#8217;m more concerned with bad guys who got out and were released than I am with a few that in fact were innocent.
CHUCK TODD : Twenty-five percent of the detainees, though. Twenty-five percent turned out not to have—turned out to be innocent. They were—
DICK CHENEY : So, where are you going to draw the line, Chuck? How are you going to know?
CHUCK TODD : Well, I&#8217;m asking you.
DICK CHENEY : I&#8217;m saying—
CHUCK TODD : Is that too high? Is that—you&#8217;re OK with that margin for error?
DICK CHENEY : I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective.
AMY GOODMAN : That was Dick Cheney on Meet the Press with Chuck Todd. John Kiriakou, your thoughts? Should Vice President Cheney be tried?
JOHN KIRIAKOU : My own personal belief is, yes, sure, he should. But I think there&#8217;s another point to be made here. We&#8217;ve seen Vice President Cheney, we&#8217;ve seen former CIA directors, several of them, former senior CIA officers go on the network news programs and defend, defend, defend their actions during the torture regime. The reason that they&#8217;re doing that is because torture is their legacy. When their obituaries are written, those obituaries are going to say that they were instrumental in the torture program. And the only thing they can do at this point to save their reputations is to keep repeating this lie that torture worked and hope that the American people eventually believe it.
AMY GOODMAN : What are your thoughts today on NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden? What would you advise him?
JOHN KIRIAKOU : I think Ed Snowden is a national hero. I think Ed Snowden gave us information on government illegality that we otherwise would never have had. I regret that the federal government has revoked his passport and has caused him to be stuck in Russia, but I think that he did a very courageous thing. I&#8217;m not sure I would have released all of the information that he released, because, in some cases, I want NSA to be spying on foreign governments and foreign leaders. That&#8217;s what NSA does; that&#8217;s what they&#8217;re supposed to do. I want the U.S. government to have a leg up, for example, in trade negotiations or defense contracting or whatever it is. But in terms of the illegality that Ed Snowden revealed, I think he did a great national service.
AMY GOODMAN : In 2013, Edward Snowden commented on the Obama administration&#8217;s treatment of whistleblowers who preceded him. He said, quote, &quot;Binney, Drake, Kiriakou, and Manning are all examples of how overly-harsh responses to public-interest whistle-blowing only escalate the scale, scope, and skill involved in future disclosures. Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they&#8217;ll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it. Instead, these draconian responses simply build better whistleblowers. If the Obama administration responds with an even harsher hand against me, they can be assured that they&#8217;ll soon find themselves facing an equally harsh public response.&quot; Again, those the words of Ed Snowden. Do you think Edward Snowden should come back to the United States, John Kiriakou?
JOHN KIRIAKOU : I do not, not under any circumstances. And I&#8217;ve said that both publicly and privately to him in a letter. I do not believe that he will get a fair trial in the United States, especially in the Eastern District of Virginia, where he&#8217;s being charged or where he has been charged. I think the deck is stacked against him, as it is against any whistleblower, and if the government has its way, Ed Snowden will never see the light of day.
AMY GOODMAN : I wanted to read a comment made by the judge at your sentencing hearing, John. Judge Leonie Brinkema sentenced you to 30 months in prison back in January 2013, saying, quote, &quot;This case is not a case about a whistleblower. It&#8217;s a case about a man who betrayed a very solemn trust, and that is a trust to keep the integrity of his agency intact and specifically to protect the identity of co-workers. ... I think 30 months is, frankly, way too light, because the message has to be sent to every covert agent that when you leave the agency you can&#8217;t just start all of a sudden revealing the names of the people with whom you worked,&quot; Judge Brinkema said. Your response?
JOHN KIRIAKOU : Yes. Three months earlier, in the hearing in which I accepted the plea, Judge Brinkema said that 30 months was, quote, &quot;fair&quot;—what did she say? Now I&#8217;m forgetting it. She said it was &quot;fair and appropriate.&quot; And she compared my case to that of Scooter Libby, even though Scooter Libby never leaked the identity of Valerie Plame. When the courtroom was full of reporters three months later, that&#8217;s when she decided to get tough and say that 30 months wasn&#8217;t enough. Judge Brinkema had ample opportunity to sentence me to as much as 10 years, and she didn&#8217;t. She sentenced me to 30 months.
Now, with that said, we had trouble with Judge Brinkema&#8217;s rulings from the very beginning. Anytime we tried to introduce evidence of whistleblowing, it was denied; of government wrongdoing, denied; my own personal history in the CIA , where I won 12 exceptional performance awards, the Meritorious Honor Award, the Counterterrorism Service Medal, not admissible. And that&#8217;s what has led me to believe that there&#8217;s no way Ed Snowden is going to get a fair trial, and he shouldn&#8217;t come back to Virginia.
AMY GOODMAN : John Kiriakou, did you know the now notorious psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, who designed the government torture program at places like Guantánamo?
JOHN KIRIAKOU : No, I had never met them. When I was working in the CIA&#8217;s Counterterrorist Center, it was a very large room. We called it a cubicle farm. There were hundreds of people in this room. And I remember them arriving and taking offices, private offices, at the very back of the room, but I never had any personal contact with either Mitchell or Jessen.
AMY GOODMAN : Do you think they should be prosecuted? Apparently, the government has decided not to?
JOHN KIRIAKOU : Absolutely. The government has decided not to prosecute them, but I think if there are going to be prosecutions, those prosecutions should begin with Mitchell and Jessen. They were wholly unqualified for the bill of goods they sold the CIA , and they simply committed crimes overseas in the name of the U.S. government. I think they should be prosecuted for those crimes.
AMY GOODMAN : The issue of revealing the name of a covert agent, why did you think that was critical in telling the story of waterboarding?
JOHN KIRIAKOU : Well, interestingly enough, the agent whose name I was convicted of releasing—and I did release it. I did tell this reporter this gentleman&#8217;s name. I didn&#8217;t actually volunteer it, I confirmed it. He had already had it. But the reporter was going to write an article saying that this man was instrumental in the torture program, and that wasn&#8217;t true. He was a good man. He had nothing to do with torture. He happened to be working in the rendition program. And I was trying to correct the record. This reporter wanted someone to interview about the program, asked if I could make an introduction. I said, &quot;I don&#8217;t think he&#8217;ll talk to you. I think he&#8217;s probably retired by now. But he was not a part of the torture program.&quot;
AMY GOODMAN : Did CIA officials or your co-workers, people in intelligence services, reach out to you either expressing their support for you or their condemnation?
JOHN KIRIAKOU : Oh, yes, dozens and dozens of former colleagues have reached out to me over the last three years. The support has been really overwhelming from my former CIA colleagues. I can honestly tell you that I can count on one hand the number of CIA officers who have walked away from me, who have ended our friendships. And every single one of those, those five individuals, was instrumental in the torture program.
AMY GOODMAN : John Kiriakou, we&#8217;re going to break. When we come back, you wrote letters from Loretto, from the prison, and I want to talk about your time in the prison, your concerns about prisons, and how you were treated, how other prisoners were treated. We&#8217;re talking to John Kiriakou, who spent 14 years at the CIA as an analyst and case officer. He exposed the Bush-era torture program, became the only official jailed in connection with it. In 2007, he was the first CIA official to publicly confirm the Bush administration&#8217;s use of waterboarding; in January 2013, sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail after pleading guilty to confirming the identity of a covert officer to a reporter, who ended up not publishing it. John Kiriakou has also written his memoir; it&#8217;s called Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA&#8217;s War on Terror . He was released from prison last week but remains under house arrest for three months. That&#8217;s where we&#8217;re talking to him, at his home in Arlington, Virginia. Stay with us.
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AMY GOODMAN : &quot;P.H.A.T.W.A.&quot; by The Narcicyst, here on Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . I&#8217;m Amy Goodman, with this exclusive radio/television/web broadcast with John Kiriakou, who is at home under house arrest in Arlington, Virginia. He was a CIA analyst and case officer for 14 years. He exposed the Bush-era torture program, became the only official jailed in connection with it, exposed waterboarding in 2007. In January 2013, he was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison. John, you were held at FCI Loretto in Pennsylvania, the federal correctional institution there. Can you talk about the letters you decided to write from there and what your life was like behind bars?
JOHN KIRIAKOU : Sure. Before I went to prison, several friends of mine—Jesselyn Radack from the Government Accountability Project, Jane Hamsher from Firedoglake.com, Tom Drake formerly of the NSA , Dan Ellsberg—they mentioned that they thought I should write an open letter to my supporters once I got situated in prison, just to let them know how I was doing. And I thought that was a good idea. So, when I got to Loretto, February 28th, 2013, I allowed myself about six weeks to get situated. And I should add, I&#8217;ve always been a big fan of Martin Luther King&#8217;s Letter from Birmingham Jail. And I had a copy with me in prison. I read it and reread it and reread it again. And I thought, &quot;Well, I&#8217;ll structure it in the same way, and I&#8217;ll write it person to person. So, that&#8217;s what I did.
Much to my surprise—this was only supposed to go to about 600 people. Much to my surprise, it was picked up by The Huffington Post , and then, from Huffington Post , it went crazy—all the broadcast networks, half a dozen magazines—and it got about a million hits. And I realized that Americans really do want to know what it&#8217;s like inside prison. I should add, too, that FCI Loretto is no Club Fed. This is a real prison with rows and rows of concertina wire atop and astride large—or, I should say, high fences. This is a serious prison. There&#8217;s no golf course. There&#8217;s no movie theater. It&#8217;s like what you see on TV. So, I wanted to convey that. And the letters became so popular that I made them into a series. I think I did probably 17 or 18 of them by the time I left to come home.
AMY GOODMAN : John Kiriakou, you wrote, &quot;People under the care of the medical unit at Loretto die with terrifying frequency.&quot; Can you explain what would happen?
JOHN KIRIAKOU : Sure. I&#8217;ll give you a couple of examples. A couple of days before I left to come home, I was in the medical unit giving blood for some blood tests, and another prisoner wheeled a third prisoner in in a wheelchair. This man was about 70 years old. He was obviously having a heart attack. He was crying. He was clutching his chest. And he said, &quot;I&#8217;m having a heart attack.&quot; Well, the woman who was helping me, who was drawing my blood, looked up at him and said, &quot;Well, you&#8217;re just going to have to wait, because I&#8217;m the only person here, and you have to wait until somebody else comes in to work.&quot; And that poor old man sat in that wheelchair in the midst of a heart attack until somebody else came to work, diagnosed him with a heart attack, and called an ambulance to take him to a local hospital. That kind of behavior is typical.
I&#8217;ll give you another example. There was a man who lived across the hall from the chapel. I worked in the chapel as an orderly. And this man complained routinely of back pain, severe back pain. Sometimes he would be hunched over. As the weeks passed, he had a cane, then he had a walker, then he&#8217;s in a wheelchair. I said, &quot;My goodness, what is wrong with you?&quot; He said, &quot;My back is killing me, and they won&#8217;t take me to a hospital for a test.&quot; So, finally, the chaplain intervened and said, &quot;This guy&#8217;s condition is obviously deteriorating quickly. Please take him to a hospital for a test.&quot; They finally took him to the local hospital. Stage IV cancer of the spine. He was dead in two weeks. And that&#8217;s really typical of the medical care in prison, not just in Loretto, but all over the Bureau of Prisons.
AMY GOODMAN : You wanted to be a—
JOHN KIRIAKOU : You have to—
AMY GOODMAN : —a GED instructor, John, in the prison?
JOHN KIRIAKOU : I&#8217;m sorry.
AMY GOODMAN : You wanted to be a GED instructor, but were told you had to be a janitor at the chapel?
JOHN KIRIAKOU : I did. Right. I have a master&#8217;s degree in legislative affairs, a bachelor&#8217;s degree in Middle Eastern studies, and I did my Ph.D. coursework at the University of Virginia in international relations. So I thought, &quot;Well, I&#8217;ll make some good use of my time, and I&#8217;ll teach a GED class.&quot; But when I volunteered, they told me, in not very nice language, &quot;If we want you to teach an effing class, we&#8217;ll ask you to teach an effing class.&quot; And so, I spent the next two years as a janitor in the chapel.
AMY GOODMAN : John Kiriakou, you write at the end of one of your letters [from] Loretto, &quot;By the time you read this&quot;—this was your last letter—&quot;I&#8217;ll be home. Now the real work can begin—the struggle for human rights, civil liberties and prison reform. I can guarantee you that I am unbowed, unbroken, uninstitutionalized and ready to fight.&quot; What does &quot;uninstitutionalized&quot; mean?
JOHN KIRIAKOU : Well, uninstitutionalized means that I never allowed the prison officials in Loretto to cow me. I got into a dispute with a lieutenant who had a reputation as being a bully, really a bully and a provocateur. And he shouted at me one day, &quot;You need to start acting more like an inmate!&quot; And I said, &quot;And what is that supposed to mean? Should I get a tattoo on my face? Should I steal food from the cafeteria to sell to people? If it means going like this and saying, &#39;Yes, sir. No, sir. Sorry, sir,&#39; that&#8217;s never going to happen. Never.&quot; I said, &quot;Respect is two ways. You get respect when you give respect. And I don&#8217;t respect you.&quot; And that&#8217;s the attitude that I maintained throughout my two years in prison.
AMY GOODMAN : What most surprised you there, John?
JOHN KIRIAKOU : I was really surprised how prisoners are treated as—as not—not treated as human beings. They&#8217;re treated as somehow subhuman, people not to be respected, people about whose health we should not be concerned, people who don&#8217;t deserve a fair hearing. It&#8217;s warehousing, and it&#8217;s warehousing being overseen by flunkies and dropouts from the local police academy or people who couldn&#8217;t cut it in the military. They&#8217;re the people running our lives in prison.
AMY GOODMAN : John Kiriakou, going back to the issue you exposed, the issue of waterboarding and torture, how did the Obama administration continue these programs? Or did they?
JOHN KIRIAKOU : I don&#8217;t think they did. There is one thing that the Obama administration has continued, and really has perfected it, compared to what the Bush administration did. And that&#8217;s drone strikes. President Obama has killed far more people with drone strikes than President Bush ever did.
AMY GOODMAN : And the issue of Greece? You&#8217;re a Greek American. In fact, you did some of your CIA work in Greece. Can you talk about what you did there and how you feel about what&#8217;s happened today with the rise of Syriza, the prime minister being the head of Syriza?
JOHN KIRIAKOU : Sure. I served in Greece for a couple of years, going back and forth, really, between headquarters and Greece. I was working on terrorism issues. But at the time—and this kind of seems quaint now—it was Euroterrorism, communist terrorism, specifically the Revolutionary Organization 17 November. I had a great experience in Greece. It&#8217;s a great country.
But the Greeks have had a tough time for the last—especially for the last seven years or so. The recession has hit Greece probably harder than any other country in western Europe, certainly harder than in the United States. And part of the problem was, you had two governing parties—PASOK and Neo Demokratia, New Democracy—that were really corrupted by the system. And now, Syriza, which is a young, new, populist party, has won a sweeping victory in the recent parliamentary elections, falling only two seats short of an absolute majority, which in Greece is really an incredible feat.
Like most Greek Americans, I&#8217;m very excited about this. I think it was time for a change. It was time for a populist regime in Greece, a leftist populist regime. And I think that under Alexis Tsipras&#8217;s leadership, I think the country may come out of its recession. Now, with that said, there&#8217;s going to have to be some give from the troika in terms of aid and assistance to Greece. The Greek people have suffered terribly. Suicides are up something like 300 percent. There&#8217;s a brain drain, where doctors, lawyers, engineers are moving to the United States or Europe or Australia. And that has to come to an end. The Greeks have to stay in Greece and try to rebuild their country. But I think that can be done under Syriza. I&#8217;m very excited about it.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, finally, as we come to an end of this conversation, from your home, under house arrest in Arlington, Virginia, your family—what happened to your wife after you were convicted and sentenced? She also worked at the agency, is that right? And also you have five children.
JOHN KIRIAKOU : Yes, that&#8217;s right, I have five children. My wife was a highly decorated, highly respected CIA officer. She was really going places, and far smarter and more accomplished than I ever was. But she was fired the day that I was arrested, only because she was related to me. And she was out of work for 10 months before finding work finally here inside the Beltway at one of the government contractors, where she&#8217;s really done beautifully, and they love her. But she was asked to leave just because she&#8217;s married to me. It made raising five children very difficult.
AMY GOODMAN : And how are your kids, now that you&#8217;ve come home?
JOHN KIRIAKOU : Oh, great. It&#8217;s wonderful. Actually, my wife and I haven&#8217;t had a night alone together since I got home. It&#8217;s, you know, three—there are three little children in the bed with us all night long. And there&#8217;s lots of hugging and storytelling and book reading. And it&#8217;s been great. They&#8217;re happy to see me home.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, John Kiriakou, I want to thank you for being with us, again, spent 14 years as a CIA analyst and case officer, exposed the Bush-era torture program, became the only official jailed in connection with it, in 2007 first publicly confirmed the use of waterboarding. AMYGOODMAN: Today, a Democracy Now! radio and television broadcast exclusive. We spend the hour with John Kiriakou, the retired CIA agent who blew the whistle on torture. He’s just been released from prison. He’ll join us from his home in Virginia, where he remains under house arrest while finishing his two-and-a-half-year sentence. Shortly after his release last week, John Kiriakou tweeted a picture of himself at home with his smiling children, along with a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: "Free at last. Free at least. Thank God Almighty. I’m free at last."

In January 2013, Kiriakou was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison. Under a plea deal, he admitted to a single count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by revealing the identity of a covert officer involved in the rendition, detention and interrogation program to a freelance reporter, who didn’t publish it. In return, prosecutors dropped charges against Kiriakou brought under the Espionage Act. In 2007, John Kiriakou became the first CIA official to publicly confirm and detail the Bush administration’s use of waterboarding when he spoke to ABC’s Brian Ross.

JOHNKIRIAKOU: At the time, I felt that waterboarding was something that we needed to do. And as time has passed, and as September 11th has—you know, has moved farther and farther back into history, I think I’ve changed my mind. And I think that waterboarding is probably something that we shouldn’t be in the business of doing.

BRIANROSS: Why do you say that now?

JOHNKIRIAKOU: Because we’re Americans, and we’re better than that.

AMYGOODMAN: John Kiriakou’s supporters say he was unfairly targeted in the Obama administration’s crackdown on government whistleblowers. Shortly after his release last week, the Government Accountability Project’s Jesselyn Radack issued a statement, saying, quote, "Kiriakou is a dedicated public servant who became a political prisoner because he brought to light one of the darkest chapters in American history: the CIA’s ineffective, immoral and illegal torture program. ... [I]t is a welcome development that Kiriakou can serve the rest of his sentence at home with his family," she wrote.

Meanwhile, the federal prosecutor in the case, Neil MacBride, has defended the government’s handling of the case. He spoke after Kiriakou’s sentencing in January of 2013.

NEIL MacBRIDE: As the judge just said in court, today’s sentence should be a reminder to every individual who works for the government, who comes into the possession of closely held, sensitive information regarding the national defense or the identity of a covert agent, that it is critical that that information remain secure and not spill out into the public domain or be shared with others who don’t have authorized access to it.

AMYGOODMAN: For more, we go to Arlington, Virginia, where we’re joined by John Kiriakou. Again, he remains under house arrest as he completes his sentence. He spent 14 years at the CIA as an analyst and case officer. In 2002, he led the team that found Abu Zubaydah, a high-ranking member of al-Qaeda. He is a father of five. In 2010, Kiriakou published a memoir titled Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror.

John Kiriakou, welcome back to Democracy Now! How does it feel to be out of prison?

JOHNKIRIAKOU: Utterly liberating. I actually had trouble falling asleep the first night home because I had grown so used to my bare mattress on a steel slab and the jingling of keys all night long. But I’ve finally adapted.

AMYGOODMAN: You’re not quite free yet, though, right, John? How long did you serve in jail?

JOHNKIRIAKOU: No.

AMYGOODMAN: And how long do you have under house arrest?

JOHNKIRIAKOU: I served 23 months in a low-security federal prison in Pennsylvania. I have three months of house arrest. And then, following house arrest, I am under what’s called supervised release, which is really probation, for another three years.

AMYGOODMAN: Talk about why you believe you were jailed.

JOHNKIRIAKOU: Oh, I am absolutely convinced, Amy, that I was jailed because of the torture debate. People leak information in Washington all the time, whether it’s on purpose or inadvertent. We’ve seen—we’ve seen people like former CIA Director Leon Panetta, former CIA Director General Petraeus, leaking classified information with impunity. And that has convinced me that I’m right when I say that my case was never about leaking. My case was about blowing the whistle on torture.

AMYGOODMAN: I wanted to turn to former Virginia Democratic Congressman Jim Moran, who took to the floor of the House of Representatives last year and called for President Obama to pardon you. Moran called you an "American hero" and a "whistleblower." He said, quote, "Kiriakou deserves a presidential pardon so his record can be cleared, just as this country is trying to heal from a dark chapter in its history." What is your response to that? You didn’t get that pardon, at least as of yet.

JOHNKIRIAKOU: No. No, I am deeply, deeply grateful for the work that Congressman Moran did. My only regret is that he’s retired now. He’s no longer in Congress. But he’s a very upstanding, very progressive and very decent man. I really appreciated his help. I’ve not formally asked for a pardon, and I probably won’t this year. But there seems to be some support growing for it. I’m always on the lookout for congressional support. And I hope that I can develop that through 2015 and then maybe go to the president sometime next year and ask for a pardon.

AMYGOODMAN: We’re going to break, and then we’re going to go back in time and talk about what you did, talk about the fact that you’re the only official related to the torture program, you blowing the whistle on torture, who has been jailed. We’re talking to John Kiriakou, who spent 14 years at the CIA as an analyst and case officer, exposed the Bush-era torture program, became the only official jailed in connection with it. We’ll be back with him at his home under house arrest in a moment.

[break]

AMYGOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. We’re spending the hour with John Kiriakou, under house arrest right now at his home in Arlington, Virginia, but he is out of jail. He spent 14 years at the CIA as an analyst and a case officer, exposed the Bush-era torture program, became the only official jailed in connection with it. In 2007, he became the first CIA official to publicly confirm the Bush administration’s use of waterboarding; in January 2013, sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison after pleading guilty to confirming the identity of a covert officer to a reporter, who didn’t publish it. Let’s go back in time to your experience with Abu Zubaydah, John Kiriakou. How did you come to meet him?

JOHNKIRIAKOU: I was the leader of a CIA group in Pakistan that conducted a series of 14 raids on suspected al-Qaeda safe houses around the central part of the country. And Abu Zubaydah happened to be in one of the houses that we raided. And after something of a gun battle, we captured him.

AMYGOODMAN: So, since your interview in 2007, it’s become known that Zubaydah was waterboarded at least 83 times and that he provided no useful information as a result. He remains imprisoned at Guantánamo without charge. His name appears more than a thousand times in the Senate report on torture that was released in December. Talk about what you know happened to him.

JOHNKIRIAKOU: Sure. Abu Zubaydah was shot three times while being captured, shot by Pakistani authorities—once in the thigh, once in the groin and once in the stomach—with an AK-47. He was very gravely wounded. And so, when he was rendered, when he was taken away from Pakistan, he was sent to a secret location, and the CIA sent a trauma surgeon from Johns Hopkins University Medical Center to this secret location to give him medical assistance. He underwent surgery. For some reason, he even had an eye removed. I’m not sure why that happened, but we know that now to be the case. And over the course of the next several months, he recovered from his gunshot wounds.

AMYGOODMAN: And talk about how you met him.

JOHNKIRIAKOU: Sure. When we first captured him, we took him to a hospital, a military hospital in Pakistan. He had lost so much blood, we needed to transfuse him. And he was initially in a coma. He came out of the coma a couple of times, and we were able, at first, to just exchange an initial comment, later on, in the next couple of days, to have short conversations. For example, when he first came out of his coma, he asked me for a glass of red wine. He was delirious. Later in the evening, he asked me if I would take the pillow and smother him. And then, the next day, we talked about poetry. We talked about Islam. We talked about the fact that he had never supported the attacks on the United States. He wanted to attack Israel.

AMYGOODMAN: And talk about what you learned happened to him from there.

JOHNKIRIAKOU: Well, he was sent from Pakistan to this secret location. And once he was healthy enough to withstand interrogation, a group of CIA interrogators—I’m sorry, a group of FBI interrogators interviewed him, appeared to have been successful in gathering some information, but then were replaced by CIA interrogators, that we’ve now learned were untrained, unprepared, and was subjected to waterboarding in addition to other torture techniques, placed into a cage. He had a fear of bugs, so they put him in a small box and put bugs in the box with him. He was subject to a cold cell, to lights on 24 hours a day, booming music so that he couldn’t sleep. There were several different things that the CIA did to him.

AMYGOODMAN: And your response to that?

JOHNKIRIAKOU: Torture is wrong under any circumstances. You know, we know from the Second World War, when the Justice Department was interrogating Nazi war criminals, we know that the establishment of a rapport, the establishment of a relationship with someone, results in actionable information, if that prisoner has actionable information which he’s willing to give. That wasn’t the case with Abu Zubaydah. He was beaten. He was waterboarded. He was subject to sleep deprivation. He had ice water poured on him in a 50-degree cell every several hours. The man just simply didn’t have any information to give.

AMYGOODMAN: When did you learn that? And when, John, did you decide to go public with this, to reveal this information?

JOHNKIRIAKOU: I learned initially that he had been waterboarded in the summer of 2002, at the end of the summer of 2002. And as I said in the 2007 interview with Brian Ross, I believed what the CIA was telling us, that he was being waterboarded, it was working, and we were gathering important, actionable intelligence that was saving American lives. It wasn’t until something like 2005 or 2006 that we realized that that just simply wasn’t true—he wasn’t producing any information—and that these techniques were horrific.

It was in 2007, Amy, that I decided to go public. President Bush said at the time, categorically, "We do not torture prisoners. We are not waterboarding." And I knew that that was a lie. And he made it seem as though this was a rogue CIA officer who decided to pour water on people’s faces. And that simply wasn’t true. Torture—the entire torture program was approved by the president himself, and it was a very carefully planned-out program. So to say that it was rogue, it was just a bald-faced lie to the American people.

AMYGOODMAN: Late last year, graphic new details of the post-9/11 U.S. torture program came to light when the Senate Intelligence Committee released the 500-page summary of its investigation into the CIA. The report concluded the intelligence agency failed to disrupt a single plot despite torturing al-Qaeda and other captives in secret prisons worldwide from 2002 and 2006. Maybe you watched this from prison, John Kiriakou—

SEN. DIANNEFEINSTEIN: First, the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques were not an effective way to gather intelligence information. Second, the CIA provided extensive amounts of inaccurate information about the operation of the program and its effectiveness to the White House, the Department of Justice, Congress, the CIA inspector general, the media and the American public. Third, CIA’s management of the program was inadequate and deeply flawed. And fourth, the CIA program was far more brutal than people were led to believe.

AMYGOODMAN: Do you remember, when you heard this report in jail, where you were? I assume you watched Dianne Feinstein on the prison TV. And your thoughts about it?

JOHNKIRIAKOU: I did, indeed. I was sitting in the Central One Unit TV room watching it with bated breath. Let me say that Senator Feinstein is one of the CIA’s leading supporters on Capitol Hill. So for Dianne Feinstein to come out with a report as critical as this report was just shows you how wrongheaded the CIA torture program was.

AMYGOODMAN: So, the report comes out, and it details a list of torture methods used on prisoners—waterboarding, sexual abuse with broomsticks, what they call rectal feeding or rectal hydration. Prisoners were threatened with buzzing power drills. Some captives were deprived of sleep for up to 180 hours, at times with their hands shackled above their heads. The torture carried out at black sites in Afghanistan, Lithuania, Romania, Poland, Thailand, secret site at Guantánamo Naval Base known as Strawberry Fields. As this unveiled, it’s only you who went to jail around these issues. Your thoughts on this?

JOHNKIRIAKOU: I feel like I live in the Twilight Zone sometimes. When the report came out, like most other Americans, I was absolutely shocked and appalled at some of the details. Even inside the CIA, we didn’t know anything about rectal hydration—with hummus, no less—with sexual abuse or sexual assault using broomsticks. I mean, people didn’t even talk about those kinds of things in the hallway, so I was absolutely shocked hearing it.

This goes back to a point I made in 2013 on this wonderful program: We need to prosecute some of these cases. I understand that reasonable people can agree to disagree on whether or not case officers who really believed they were carrying out a legal activity should be prosecuted. I understand that. But what about case officers who took the law into their own hands or who flouted the law and raped prisoners with broomsticks or carried out rectal hydration with hummus? Those were not approved interrogation techniques. Why aren’t those officers being prosecuted? I think, at the very least, that’s where we should start the prosecutions.

AMYGOODMAN: I want to play for you comments President Obama made in 2009 about whether CIA officials involved in torture should be prosecuted. He appeared on the ABC News program This Week.

PRESIDENTBARACKOBAMA: I don’t believe that anybody is above the law. On the other hand, I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards. And part of my job is to make sure that—for example, at the CIA, you’ve got extraordinarily talented people who are working very hard to keep Americans safe. I don’t want them to suddenly feel like they’ve got to spend all their time looking over their shoulders and lawyering.

PRESIDENTBARACKOBAMA: You know, we have not made final decisions, but my instinct is for us to focus on how do we make sure that, moving forward, we are doing the right thing.

AMYGOODMAN: That was President Obama right after he became president in 2009. Right after, he signed, well, what? One of his first executive orders, to close Guantánamo. Your thoughts on what he just said—

JOHNKIRIAKOU: Right.

AMYGOODMAN: —to George Stephanopoulos?

JOHNKIRIAKOU: Sure. I understand that President Obama is not going to seek the prosecution of the CIA leaders who carried out the torture, the case officers involved in the day-to-day torture program. I understand that. The lawyers at the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department, I understand. No problem. But what about the CIA officers who directly violated the law, who carried out interrogations that resulted in death? What about the torturers of Hassan Ghul? Hassan Ghul was killed during an interrogation session.

AMYGOODMAN: In Afghanistan.

JOHNKIRIAKOU: Those people should not be above the law. Correct, in Afghanistan. Those people should not be above the law. They committed crimes, whether in the United States or overseas. And those people should be prosecuted.

AMYGOODMAN: Instead, you were the only one who went to prison. Would you do what you did again, John?

JOHNKIRIAKOU: As crazy as it sounds, yes, I would. I would do it all over again. What has happened since that 2007 ABC News interview is that torture has been banned in the United States. It is no longer a part of U.S. government policy. And I’m proud to have played a role in that. If that cost me 23 months of my life, well, you know what? It was worth it.

AMYGOODMAN: Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press in December, after the Senate torture report was released, former Vice President Dick Cheney said he would do it all again.

DICKCHENEY: I’m more concerned with bad guys who got out and were released than I am with a few that in fact were innocent.

CHUCKTODD: Twenty-five percent of the detainees, though. Twenty-five percent turned out not to have—turned out to be innocent. They were—

DICKCHENEY: So, where are you going to draw the line, Chuck? How are you going to know?

CHUCKTODD: Well, I’m asking you.

DICKCHENEY: I’m saying—

CHUCKTODD: Is that too high? Is that—you’re OK with that margin for error?

DICKCHENEY: I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective.

AMYGOODMAN: That was Dick Cheney on Meet the Press with Chuck Todd. John Kiriakou, your thoughts? Should Vice President Cheney be tried?

JOHNKIRIAKOU: My own personal belief is, yes, sure, he should. But I think there’s another point to be made here. We’ve seen Vice President Cheney, we’ve seen former CIA directors, several of them, former senior CIA officers go on the network news programs and defend, defend, defend their actions during the torture regime. The reason that they’re doing that is because torture is their legacy. When their obituaries are written, those obituaries are going to say that they were instrumental in the torture program. And the only thing they can do at this point to save their reputations is to keep repeating this lie that torture worked and hope that the American people eventually believe it.

AMYGOODMAN: What are your thoughts today on NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden? What would you advise him?

JOHNKIRIAKOU: I think Ed Snowden is a national hero. I think Ed Snowden gave us information on government illegality that we otherwise would never have had. I regret that the federal government has revoked his passport and has caused him to be stuck in Russia, but I think that he did a very courageous thing. I’m not sure I would have released all of the information that he released, because, in some cases, I want NSA to be spying on foreign governments and foreign leaders. That’s what NSA does; that’s what they’re supposed to do. I want the U.S. government to have a leg up, for example, in trade negotiations or defense contracting or whatever it is. But in terms of the illegality that Ed Snowden revealed, I think he did a great national service.

AMYGOODMAN: In 2013, Edward Snowden commented on the Obama administration’s treatment of whistleblowers who preceded him. He said, quote, "Binney, Drake, Kiriakou, and Manning are all examples of how overly-harsh responses to public-interest whistle-blowing only escalate the scale, scope, and skill involved in future disclosures. Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they’ll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it. Instead, these draconian responses simply build better whistleblowers. If the Obama administration responds with an even harsher hand against me, they can be assured that they’ll soon find themselves facing an equally harsh public response." Again, those the words of Ed Snowden. Do you think Edward Snowden should come back to the United States, John Kiriakou?

JOHNKIRIAKOU: I do not, not under any circumstances. And I’ve said that both publicly and privately to him in a letter. I do not believe that he will get a fair trial in the United States, especially in the Eastern District of Virginia, where he’s being charged or where he has been charged. I think the deck is stacked against him, as it is against any whistleblower, and if the government has its way, Ed Snowden will never see the light of day.

AMYGOODMAN: I wanted to read a comment made by the judge at your sentencing hearing, John. Judge Leonie Brinkema sentenced you to 30 months in prison back in January 2013, saying, quote, "This case is not a case about a whistleblower. It’s a case about a man who betrayed a very solemn trust, and that is a trust to keep the integrity of his agency intact and specifically to protect the identity of co-workers. ... I think 30 months is, frankly, way too light, because the message has to be sent to every covert agent that when you leave the agency you can’t just start all of a sudden revealing the names of the people with whom you worked," Judge Brinkema said. Your response?

JOHNKIRIAKOU: Yes. Three months earlier, in the hearing in which I accepted the plea, Judge Brinkema said that 30 months was, quote, "fair"—what did she say? Now I’m forgetting it. She said it was "fair and appropriate." And she compared my case to that of Scooter Libby, even though Scooter Libby never leaked the identity of Valerie Plame. When the courtroom was full of reporters three months later, that’s when she decided to get tough and say that 30 months wasn’t enough. Judge Brinkema had ample opportunity to sentence me to as much as 10 years, and she didn’t. She sentenced me to 30 months.

Now, with that said, we had trouble with Judge Brinkema’s rulings from the very beginning. Anytime we tried to introduce evidence of whistleblowing, it was denied; of government wrongdoing, denied; my own personal history in the CIA, where I won 12 exceptional performance awards, the Meritorious Honor Award, the Counterterrorism Service Medal, not admissible. And that’s what has led me to believe that there’s no way Ed Snowden is going to get a fair trial, and he shouldn’t come back to Virginia.

AMYGOODMAN: John Kiriakou, did you know the now notorious psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, who designed the government torture program at places like Guantánamo?

JOHNKIRIAKOU: No, I had never met them. When I was working in the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center, it was a very large room. We called it a cubicle farm. There were hundreds of people in this room. And I remember them arriving and taking offices, private offices, at the very back of the room, but I never had any personal contact with either Mitchell or Jessen.

AMYGOODMAN: Do you think they should be prosecuted? Apparently, the government has decided not to?

JOHNKIRIAKOU: Absolutely. The government has decided not to prosecute them, but I think if there are going to be prosecutions, those prosecutions should begin with Mitchell and Jessen. They were wholly unqualified for the bill of goods they sold the CIA, and they simply committed crimes overseas in the name of the U.S. government. I think they should be prosecuted for those crimes.

AMYGOODMAN: The issue of revealing the name of a covert agent, why did you think that was critical in telling the story of waterboarding?

JOHNKIRIAKOU: Well, interestingly enough, the agent whose name I was convicted of releasing—and I did release it. I did tell this reporter this gentleman’s name. I didn’t actually volunteer it, I confirmed it. He had already had it. But the reporter was going to write an article saying that this man was instrumental in the torture program, and that wasn’t true. He was a good man. He had nothing to do with torture. He happened to be working in the rendition program. And I was trying to correct the record. This reporter wanted someone to interview about the program, asked if I could make an introduction. I said, "I don’t think he’ll talk to you. I think he’s probably retired by now. But he was not a part of the torture program."

AMYGOODMAN: Did CIA officials or your co-workers, people in intelligence services, reach out to you either expressing their support for you or their condemnation?

JOHNKIRIAKOU: Oh, yes, dozens and dozens of former colleagues have reached out to me over the last three years. The support has been really overwhelming from my former CIA colleagues. I can honestly tell you that I can count on one hand the number of CIA officers who have walked away from me, who have ended our friendships. And every single one of those, those five individuals, was instrumental in the torture program.

AMYGOODMAN: John Kiriakou, we’re going to break. When we come back, you wrote letters from Loretto, from the prison, and I want to talk about your time in the prison, your concerns about prisons, and how you were treated, how other prisoners were treated. We’re talking to John Kiriakou, who spent 14 years at the CIA as an analyst and case officer. He exposed the Bush-era torture program, became the only official jailed in connection with it. In 2007, he was the first CIA official to publicly confirm the Bush administration’s use of waterboarding; in January 2013, sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail after pleading guilty to confirming the identity of a covert officer to a reporter, who ended up not publishing it. John Kiriakou has also written his memoir; it’s called Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror. He was released from prison last week but remains under house arrest for three months. That’s where we’re talking to him, at his home in Arlington, Virginia. Stay with us.

[break]

AMYGOODMAN: "P.H.A.T.W.A." by The Narcicyst, here on Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with this exclusive radio/television/web broadcast with John Kiriakou, who is at home under house arrest in Arlington, Virginia. He was a CIA analyst and case officer for 14 years. He exposed the Bush-era torture program, became the only official jailed in connection with it, exposed waterboarding in 2007. In January 2013, he was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison. John, you were held at FCI Loretto in Pennsylvania, the federal correctional institution there. Can you talk about the letters you decided to write from there and what your life was like behind bars?

JOHNKIRIAKOU: Sure. Before I went to prison, several friends of mine—Jesselyn Radack from the Government Accountability Project, Jane Hamsher from Firedoglake.com, Tom Drake formerly of the NSA, Dan Ellsberg—they mentioned that they thought I should write an open letter to my supporters once I got situated in prison, just to let them know how I was doing. And I thought that was a good idea. So, when I got to Loretto, February 28th, 2013, I allowed myself about six weeks to get situated. And I should add, I’ve always been a big fan of Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail. And I had a copy with me in prison. I read it and reread it and reread it again. And I thought, "Well, I’ll structure it in the same way, and I’ll write it person to person. So, that’s what I did.

Much to my surprise—this was only supposed to go to about 600 people. Much to my surprise, it was picked up by The Huffington Post, and then, from Huffington Post, it went crazy—all the broadcast networks, half a dozen magazines—and it got about a million hits. And I realized that Americans really do want to know what it’s like inside prison. I should add, too, that FCI Loretto is no Club Fed. This is a real prison with rows and rows of concertina wire atop and astride large—or, I should say, high fences. This is a serious prison. There’s no golf course. There’s no movie theater. It’s like what you see on TV. So, I wanted to convey that. And the letters became so popular that I made them into a series. I think I did probably 17 or 18 of them by the time I left to come home.

AMYGOODMAN: John Kiriakou, you wrote, "People under the care of the medical unit at Loretto die with terrifying frequency." Can you explain what would happen?

JOHNKIRIAKOU: Sure. I’ll give you a couple of examples. A couple of days before I left to come home, I was in the medical unit giving blood for some blood tests, and another prisoner wheeled a third prisoner in in a wheelchair. This man was about 70 years old. He was obviously having a heart attack. He was crying. He was clutching his chest. And he said, "I’m having a heart attack." Well, the woman who was helping me, who was drawing my blood, looked up at him and said, "Well, you’re just going to have to wait, because I’m the only person here, and you have to wait until somebody else comes in to work." And that poor old man sat in that wheelchair in the midst of a heart attack until somebody else came to work, diagnosed him with a heart attack, and called an ambulance to take him to a local hospital. That kind of behavior is typical.

I’ll give you another example. There was a man who lived across the hall from the chapel. I worked in the chapel as an orderly. And this man complained routinely of back pain, severe back pain. Sometimes he would be hunched over. As the weeks passed, he had a cane, then he had a walker, then he’s in a wheelchair. I said, "My goodness, what is wrong with you?" He said, "My back is killing me, and they won’t take me to a hospital for a test." So, finally, the chaplain intervened and said, "This guy’s condition is obviously deteriorating quickly. Please take him to a hospital for a test." They finally took him to the local hospital. Stage IV cancer of the spine. He was dead in two weeks. And that’s really typical of the medical care in prison, not just in Loretto, but all over the Bureau of Prisons.

AMYGOODMAN: You wanted to be a—

JOHNKIRIAKOU: You have to—

AMYGOODMAN: —a GED instructor, John, in the prison?

JOHNKIRIAKOU: I’m sorry.

AMYGOODMAN: You wanted to be a GED instructor, but were told you had to be a janitor at the chapel?

JOHNKIRIAKOU: I did. Right. I have a master’s degree in legislative affairs, a bachelor’s degree in Middle Eastern studies, and I did my Ph.D. coursework at the University of Virginia in international relations. So I thought, "Well, I’ll make some good use of my time, and I’ll teach a GED class." But when I volunteered, they told me, in not very nice language, "If we want you to teach an effing class, we’ll ask you to teach an effing class." And so, I spent the next two years as a janitor in the chapel.

AMYGOODMAN: John Kiriakou, you write at the end of one of your letters [from] Loretto, "By the time you read this"—this was your last letter—"I’ll be home. Now the real work can begin—the struggle for human rights, civil liberties and prison reform. I can guarantee you that I am unbowed, unbroken, uninstitutionalized and ready to fight." What does "uninstitutionalized" mean?

JOHNKIRIAKOU: Well, uninstitutionalized means that I never allowed the prison officials in Loretto to cow me. I got into a dispute with a lieutenant who had a reputation as being a bully, really a bully and a provocateur. And he shouted at me one day, "You need to start acting more like an inmate!" And I said, "And what is that supposed to mean? Should I get a tattoo on my face? Should I steal food from the cafeteria to sell to people? If it means going like this and saying, 'Yes, sir. No, sir. Sorry, sir,' that’s never going to happen. Never." I said, "Respect is two ways. You get respect when you give respect. And I don’t respect you." And that’s the attitude that I maintained throughout my two years in prison.

AMYGOODMAN: What most surprised you there, John?

JOHNKIRIAKOU: I was really surprised how prisoners are treated as—as not—not treated as human beings. They’re treated as somehow subhuman, people not to be respected, people about whose health we should not be concerned, people who don’t deserve a fair hearing. It’s warehousing, and it’s warehousing being overseen by flunkies and dropouts from the local police academy or people who couldn’t cut it in the military. They’re the people running our lives in prison.

AMYGOODMAN: John Kiriakou, going back to the issue you exposed, the issue of waterboarding and torture, how did the Obama administration continue these programs? Or did they?

JOHNKIRIAKOU: I don’t think they did. There is one thing that the Obama administration has continued, and really has perfected it, compared to what the Bush administration did. And that’s drone strikes. President Obama has killed far more people with drone strikes than President Bush ever did.

AMYGOODMAN: And the issue of Greece? You’re a Greek American. In fact, you did some of your CIA work in Greece. Can you talk about what you did there and how you feel about what’s happened today with the rise of Syriza, the prime minister being the head of Syriza?

JOHNKIRIAKOU: Sure. I served in Greece for a couple of years, going back and forth, really, between headquarters and Greece. I was working on terrorism issues. But at the time—and this kind of seems quaint now—it was Euroterrorism, communist terrorism, specifically the Revolutionary Organization 17 November. I had a great experience in Greece. It’s a great country.

But the Greeks have had a tough time for the last—especially for the last seven years or so. The recession has hit Greece probably harder than any other country in western Europe, certainly harder than in the United States. And part of the problem was, you had two governing parties—PASOK and Neo Demokratia, New Democracy—that were really corrupted by the system. And now, Syriza, which is a young, new, populist party, has won a sweeping victory in the recent parliamentary elections, falling only two seats short of an absolute majority, which in Greece is really an incredible feat.

Like most Greek Americans, I’m very excited about this. I think it was time for a change. It was time for a populist regime in Greece, a leftist populist regime. And I think that under Alexis Tsipras’s leadership, I think the country may come out of its recession. Now, with that said, there’s going to have to be some give from the troika in terms of aid and assistance to Greece. The Greek people have suffered terribly. Suicides are up something like 300 percent. There’s a brain drain, where doctors, lawyers, engineers are moving to the United States or Europe or Australia. And that has to come to an end. The Greeks have to stay in Greece and try to rebuild their country. But I think that can be done under Syriza. I’m very excited about it.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, finally, as we come to an end of this conversation, from your home, under house arrest in Arlington, Virginia, your family—what happened to your wife after you were convicted and sentenced? She also worked at the agency, is that right? And also you have five children.

JOHNKIRIAKOU: Yes, that’s right, I have five children. My wife was a highly decorated, highly respected CIA officer. She was really going places, and far smarter and more accomplished than I ever was. But she was fired the day that I was arrested, only because she was related to me. And she was out of work for 10 months before finding work finally here inside the Beltway at one of the government contractors, where she’s really done beautifully, and they love her. But she was asked to leave just because she’s married to me. It made raising five children very difficult.

AMYGOODMAN: And how are your kids, now that you’ve come home?

JOHNKIRIAKOU: Oh, great. It’s wonderful. Actually, my wife and I haven’t had a night alone together since I got home. It’s, you know, three—there are three little children in the bed with us all night long. And there’s lots of hugging and storytelling and book reading. And it’s been great. They’re happy to see me home.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, John Kiriakou, I want to thank you for being with us, again, spent 14 years as a CIA analyst and case officer, exposed the Bush-era torture program, became the only official jailed in connection with it, in 2007 first publicly confirmed the use of waterboarding.

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Mon, 09 Feb 2015 00:00:00 -0500Exclusive: Deported Palestinian Scholar Sami Al-Arian on His Chilling Post-9/11 Prosecutionhttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/2/6/exclusive_deported_palestinian_scholar_sami_al
tag:democracynow.org,2015-02-06:en/story/d98969 JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The Palestinian activist and professor Sami Al-Arian has been deported this week from the United States. In one of the most controversial prosecutions of the post-9/11 era, Al-Arian was jailed in Florida for five-and-a-half years on what many described as trumped-up charges. He was arrested in 2003 at a time when he was one of the most prominent Palestinian activists in the United States. In addition to teaching at the University of South Florida, Al-Arian was a frequent media commentator and speaker at antiwar rallies. He co-founded the Tampa Bay Coalition for Peace and Justice and the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom. Between 1997 and 2001, he visited the White House four times. He actively campaigned for George W. Bush in the 2000 election. But life for Sami Al-Arian changed after the September 11th attacks.
AMY GOODMAN : On September 28th, 2001, Sami Al-Arian was interviewed on Fox News by Bill O&#8217;Reilly about former University of South Florida professor Ramadan Shalah, who went on to become the leader of the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Beginning the next day, the University of South Florida, where Al-Arian worked, was overwhelmed by hundreds of threatening letters and emails. Thirty-six hours after the interview, the university put Professor Al-Arian on paid leave. In October of 2002, I interviewed Professor Al-Arian here in New York when he spoke at the Not in Our Name rally in Central Park. I asked him about his appearance on Bill O&#8217;Reilly.
SAMI AL- ARIAN : The way it was—the interview went, the guy attacked me viciously. So, many emails and threatening phone calls came to me personally at the department. So the department put me on paid leave, and then they banned me after that from coming to campus, within three months, because of the—you know, the orchestrated campaign by pro-Zionist groups and also by some politicians and some appointed people, people appointed by Governor Bush, particularly members of the board of trustees at the university. They voted to terminate my employment in December of 2001. It hasn&#8217;t been finalized, because faculty unions and other professors from around the country, as well as the American Association of University Professors, have been protesting. And the AAUP has threatened that if they do terminate my employment, they will be censured, which is a black mark. So, eventually, the president opted to sue me in court, to get me fired through the court system.
AMY GOODMAN : So, the university has banned you, on what grounds?
SAMI AL- ARIAN : It&#8217;s not really clear, except, you know, they say that the campus was disrupted. And it goes like: Since people have threatened my life, the campus has not been secure, and the best way to secure it is to terminate my employment. I don&#8217;t think—it&#8217;s a bogus argument. I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s going to fly. But that&#8217;s the essence of what they&#8217;re saying.
AMY GOODMAN : So the university is saying because your life has been threatened, they&#8217;re banning you.
SAMI AL- ARIAN : That&#8217;s right, exactly. Instead of going against the real terrorists, the perpetrators of the threats, they&#8217;re going after me.
AMY GOODMAN : The Palestinian activist and professor Sami Al-Arian speaking in October 2002. Four months after our interview, in February 2003, Al-Arian was arrested and accused of being a leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The Justice Department handed down a sweeping 50-count indictment against him and seven other men, charging them with conspiracy to commit murder, giving material support to terrorists, extortion, perjury and other offenses. He was held in solitary confinement leading up to the trial. This is an excerpt from the documentary USA vs. Al-Arian .&quot;
SAMI AL- ARIAN : And I was put in solitary confinement 23 hours a day—and sometimes, for weeks, 24 hours a day. I wasn&#8217;t allowed even to see my attorneys, when she comes in. I wasn&#8217;t allowed to call my family. For six months, I was not allowed to make a single phone call.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: At the end of his trial in December 2005, the jury failed to return a single guilty verdict. Al-Arian was acquitted on eight of 17 counts against him, and the jury deadlocked on the rest. Four months after the verdict, he agreed to plead guilty to one of the remaining charges in exchange for being released and deported. He was later found guilty of civil contempt for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury in another case. In the end, Al-Arian was jailed from February of 2003 until September of 2008. For three-and-a-half years, he was imprisoned in solitary confinement. He was then held under house arrest until this week, when he was deported to Turkey. Last year, a federal court dropped all charges against him.
AMY GOODMAN : Sami Al-Arian joins us now from Istanbul, Turkey, in his first broadcast interview since being deported. And we&#8217;re joined by his daughter, Laila Al-Arian, a Peabody Award-winning journalist based in Washington, D.C., co-author with Chris Hedges of the book Collateral Damage: America&#8217;s War Against Iraqi Civilians .
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Sami Al-Arian, how does it feel to have left the United States, to have been deported to where you are right now in Turkey?
SAMI AL- ARIAN : It feels like I&#8217;m free, finally really feeling freedom for the first time in 12 years. I don&#8217;t have to watch over my back or my head, or think that someone is trying to monitor you or get you. So, it feels like you&#8217;re free.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And this whole period that you&#8217;ve been under, essentially, house arrest, could you talk about that experience, as well?
SAMI AL- ARIAN : I mean, it&#8217;s much better than prison, of course, but you&#8217;re under house arrest, so basically you&#8217;re confined to your living environment. And though there were no restrictions, other than that you can&#8217;t leave the house, you still know that you&#8217;re being monitored all over you. So it&#8217;s not really total freedom. And unfortunately, after 9/11, many Americans feel that they live in surveillance and police state, and that&#8217;s a very discomforting feeling.
AMY GOODMAN : Why did you choose to move to Turkey, Sami Al-Arian?
SAMI AL- ARIAN : Well, I actually applied to many countries, some in Latin America, some in the Middle East and Turkey. And I have friends who actually talked to the Turkish authorities, and they immediately made the decision to accept me. So, it&#8217;s a tribute to them and to their thinking, of that they value people who fight for freedom or have been dealt with unjustly. And I&#8217;m very grateful for that.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We&#8217;re also joined by Laila Al-Arian, your daughter. Laila, what&#8217;s the most important thing for Americans to understand about your father&#8217;s case and the injustices that occurred here?
LAILA AL- ARIAN : I think what&#8217;s really important to take note of is the fact that when my father was arrested nearly 12 years ago in February, on February 20th, 2003, John Ashcroft went on national television and made pretty extraordinary claims about who my father is, completely distorting and outright lying about my father, calling him a terrorist on national television. And, of course, years later, none of that has borne true. My father was acquitted by 12 ordinary jurors in Florida. He said from the very beginning this is a political case. And I think what people should take away from what has been a nightmare for our family is the fact that in the United States of America there&#8217;s no room for political prisoners, there&#8217;s no room for politically motivated prosecutions. And, you know, my father was vindicated, even if he did have to eventually leave the country. I think when we look back at this case in history, we&#8217;ll see that, you know, it&#8217;s really a shameful part of our history. And, you know, it won&#8217;t be—it won&#8217;t be something that anyone will look at with any kind of pride. So, I hope we learn the lessons from this case.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Laila, the impact on you and the other members of your family, the many years of this ordeal?
LAILA AL- ARIAN : Of course it&#8217;s impacted us personally. My sister, the youngest sibling, was nine years old when all of this began. She&#8217;s now about to graduate college. So you can just see how long this ordeal has lasted for us. You know, it&#8217;s been, in many ways, pretty destabilizing, feeling that we&#8217;ve been—not feeling, knowing, actually, that we&#8217;ve been under surveillance, even as children. So, when we were going over—you know, when my father was preparing for his trial, and his attorneys, we learned that, in fact, all of our phone calls were recorded, even as children. We had the opportunity to even listen to some of the phone calls between us and our friends when we were in grade school. It&#8217;s something that&#8217;s pretty psychologically jarring and traumatizing. So I think really feeling that every aspect of your life is under surveillance by the government, simply because my father was an outspoken Palestinian advocate, is something that I&#8217;ll never truly get over.
But at the same time, there&#8217;s been a lot of positive things that have come out of this case, a lot of the relationships we&#8217;ve formed with many supporters, many activists, who have really, you know, shown tremendous courage in standing up for my father and his rights, and that&#8217;s what we&#8217;ll really remember more than anything else.
AMY GOODMAN : Sami, if you could talk, from your own perspective, about what happened to you? I played that clip from 2002, when I interviewed you at a big peace rally that you were addressing here in New York. You would soon be arrested. Your case factored into a Senate race in Florida. Talk about your journey.
SAMI AL- ARIAN : It&#8217;s really a story of what happened after 9/11. After 9/11, for whatever reason, the forces of intolerance, exclusionary politics and hegemony really took center stage, where rational people were no longer able to advance any kind of dialogue or rationality in their dealings. So what you have here is people who pressured the government just to take retaliatory action against any activists. And if they had the opportunity to do that, they just went for it.
For instance, you know, my case was celebrated as being the first case after the PATRIOT Act, meaning—you know, they said that the intelligence people did not speak to the prosecution&#8217;s, and therefore the government, to actually prosecute criminals, they didn&#8217;t know anything about my activities. And that was patently false, because during my discovery I saw an earlier version of the indictment back in 2000, when we were very active politically and my brother-in-law was in immigration court. They really wanted to indict me and stop what—you know, the activity that we were doing. But somehow Janet Reno, Department of Justice, refused, refused to prosecute that case. And it was every other act that they said the prosecution didn&#8217;t know from the intelligence people, was there up to 2000, so that was patently false.
And it was so political case that, you know, all legal standards were just—were just ignored. You know, my speedy trial—I was denied speedy trial. You know, the judge asked me in April of 2003 if I&#8217;m going to waive my speedy trial. When I said no, that meant that they had to try me within 70 days. The government immediately objected and said they were not ready. And if they were not ready to try the case, why did they indict?
So if you go back and see the political nature of the case—when USF was in hot water because they wanted to terminate my employment, and they couldn&#8217;t do it because of the pressure that was coming from all over the place, we found, for instance, that the president of USF went to the U.S. attorney, in public, asking him to investigate. And at the end of the meeting, the U.S. attorney announces, in February of 2002, the empaneling of a grand jury. Now, grand juries are supposed to be in secret. And here we had the university president going to the government, asking them to bail her out, and at the end of the meeting, they announced the empaneling of a grand jury. And then nothing happens.
And I saw in discovery, for instance, when the government wanted to settle—I mean, sorry, when the university wanted to settle with me, and they offered me almost a million dollars to resign, the board of trustees chairman objected, because he had been calling me, you know, all kind of names up to that point. And he was the governor&#8217;s appointee, Jeb Bush&#8217;s appointee. So he goes to Jeb Bush, basically—and we have that information from their lawyer—and he asks to bail him out. And then, somehow, instead of offering me a settlement, they sue me in court in order to fire me. It was a delaying tactic. And I could see, during my discovery, how the speed-up of the grand jury went in August, September, October and so on, until the indictment came back in February.
And then, we saw, you know, that the—you know, during the superseding indictment, when they indicted earlier in 2003, they had 17 counts against me. But they knew that half of these counts, the statute of limitations had run out. And the judge kept telling them, &quot;When are you going to supersede?&quot; But they didn&#8217;t want to supersede with less counts, so they added more counts on some transactions that took place in Chicago that I had no knowledge of, and they knew that I had no knowledge of it. And when we went to trial, they produced zero evidence of that. And then the person who was actually on the phone calls, on the transactions, on the bank account, on the—on everything that had to deal with Chicago, was soon acquitted, and I wasn&#8217;t, because two jurors couldn&#8217;t bring themselves to acquit on all counts. So, you know, from start to finish, it was a political case, unfortunately, that took a very ugly turn. And, you know, thankfully, we had great jurors who could see through that, and they would not, at the end, go along and support the government&#8217;s case.
AMY GOODMAN : Sami Al-Arian, we have to break, but we&#8217;re going to come back to this discussion. Sami Al-Arian, prominent Palestinian activist and professor, has lived in the United States for the last 40 years, on Wednesday was deported to Turkey. He was previously accused of ties to the group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, but a Florida jury failed to return a single guilty verdict on any of the 17 charges against him. We&#8217;re talking to Sami Al-Arian in Istanbul, Turkey, and his daughter Laila, the Peabody Award-winning journalist based in Washington, D.C. We&#8217;ll continue with them in a moment.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . I&#8217;m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, as we turn to an excerpt of the film, USA vs. Al-Arian . Sami Al-Arian&#8217;s son, in this excerpt, his son Ali, describes the night his father was arrested in February of 2003.
ALI AL- ARIAN : I woke up to—there was a guy just searching all over my room with a flashlight. And he had just like—I don&#8217;t remember. He was wearing just like all black. So he just starts going like this, like with the flashlight everywhere he put. And I guess he just saw me for a second. He just put it in my face, and I wake up. And I look, and the door was already open. And then, I was the last one to wake up. So I saw my dad. He was standing where the AC blows. He was standing on the wall with his hands up like this. So then I went to the living room, and I just see all these guys scattered all over the living room, like one police cop and just a million guys in suits. And then I just see like my mom and my two sisters crying and everything, and I knew what was going on.
AMY GOODMAN : That is Ali Al-Arian. We&#8217;re joined by Sami Al-Arian, who has just been deported to Turkey on Wednesday from the United States, after being held in prison for more than five years, and more three of those years in solitary confinement, then in house arrest for many years. We&#8217;re also joined by Sami Al-Arian&#8217;s daughter, Laila Al-Arian, who is a prominent journalist. She&#8217;s speaking to us from Washington, D.C. How old were you then, Laila, when your brother Ali is describing what took place? And where were you when your dad was arrested?
LAILA AL- ARIAN : I was actually the same age as my youngest sister is now. I was 21, studying at Georgetown University. And I actually heard the news in a phone call from an administrator who worked in the same office where I had my work-study job. And she called me to convey her sadness over the arrest. I had no idea, so of course I was really shocked to learn what happened and, you know, just tried to focus on graduating, really, at that point. And then, after that, I really started becoming involved in advocating for my father and raising awareness, not just about his case, but about the atrocious prison conditions that he was suffering under, which we talked about a little bit earlier. Throughout that time, he also went on three different hunger strikes to protest his prison conditions, but also the fact that a vindictive prosecutor, long after my father was acquitted by a jury, tried to ensnare him in another case up here in Virginia unrelated even to his own trial. So, you know, there were a number of times when we really had to raise awareness about his case, and that kind of became a full-time job for our family.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Sami Al-Arian, the fact that you had lived in the United States for 40 years and that you had been invited to the White House four times during the Bush years, the impact on you of this sudden turning against you by the government?
SAMI AL- ARIAN : Well, of course, I&#8217;m aware of the pressures that they were facing, as I said, after 9/11. But unfortunately, you know, most of the rules that govern the relationship between the citizens and the government were just scrapped. You know, the government has now—or at least after, shortly after 9/11, they just did whatever they thought they can get away with. You know, I remember one of the lawyers, who had access to some information, was that even the prosecutors themselves, when they went, before indictment, to Washington, D.C., telling Chertoff, who was at the time the head of the criminal section of the Justice Department, that some of these charges they couldn&#8217;t prove. He said, &quot;Everything stays. Everything stays.&quot; So, you know, it&#8217;s very sad that you had to go through this.
You know, you&#8217;re right, I went to the White House several times, not just during the Bush, but even the Clinton administration. I was able to communicate, and that&#8217;s a tribute to the system, in fact, that I was able to go and meet with all kinds of leaders. You know, I met with Bush, Hillary, you know, Bill Clinton, all kinds of people in Congress, chairmen, speakers and so on and so forth. And the whole point was to engage politically, because there are certain causes that were of concern to me at the time. A lot of it has to do with civil rights and secret evidence. And I thought that we were making progress, that the politicians were really responsive to our plea and to our campaign against the use of secret evidence.
Even in the—a lot of people ask me, &quot;Why did you support Bush?&quot; Well, it wasn&#8217;t really supporting Bush per se . You now, I approached both the Gore campaign and the Bush campaign, and the Gore campaign, whose administration at the time was using secret evidence, against mostly Arabs and Muslims, they just ignored our pleas, whereas the Bush campaign gave us lip service, except at the last month, when the race was neck to neck. So I get a call from someone who was very close to Karl Rove, asking me personally how we can get the endorsement of the Muslim community. And my answer was that you need to—so he needs to say—the candidate, Bush, needs to say publicly that he&#8217;s against secret evidence and that he is for the bill that we were advancing in Congress. And to my surprise, the following day, during the second debate, he said these two things. You know, he was asked about racial profiling, and he came in saying, you know, &quot;There&#8217;s another form of racial profiling used against Arab Americans. It&#8217;s called secret evidence. And I support the bill in Congress.&quot; And I get a call back, and said, &quot;Now I delivered. Are you going to deliver?&quot;
So it shows that empowerment of communities does work when you are active. And the Muslim leaders, the Arab—the Muslim American leaders actually met and decided to support Bush based on his stand on secret evidence. And the following week, they met and endorsed him, and they identified six states as being the swing states. And Florida was my—because I lived in Florida, it fell into me. And we did a lot of programs, again, based on this; it wasn&#8217;t based on Iraq or Palestine or other things. It really was based on that one issue. And he won by 537 votes. And obviously, we proved later on that we delivered to him 14,000 extra votes than what he would have got had we not intervened.
And then, the following month, you know, I get invited to the inauguration, and I get a thank you from Newt Gingrich and John Sununu and Tom Davis, that we really delivered that to Bush. And then we asked them to deliver for us secret evidence, you know, the bill against secret evidence. And they tell us that the Bush—because Ashcroft was delayed, his confirmation was delayed, he said it&#8217;s going to take time to study the issue. But I get a call back in August of 2001 basically telling me, from the same person, that they&#8217;ve studied the issue, and we were going to get—to hear good news. And he asked me to invite all the Arab and Muslim leaders to Washington, D.C., at the White House, in which that news would have been announced.
AMY GOODMAN : And then what happened? I think it might have—our feed to Istanbul, Turkey, might have frozen, but let&#8217;s see if he came back. Sami, you left us by saying then you got a call where you were supposed to invite everyone to Washington for an important announcement.
SAMI AL- ARIAN : Right. And I did invite everybody, and I briefed them, and I told them that there will be an announcement, an important announcement, against the use of secret evidence by Bush that afternoon. And everybody was in town. Unfortunately, it was on 9/11. It was 3:00 on 9/11. So that meeting never happened. But everybody was asking, &quot;How come all these Arab and Muslim leaders were in Washington, even though the airspace was closed for several days?&quot; And the reason they were behind Bush when he visited a mosque and when he went to the National Cathedral is because they were already there. They were going to meet with him for that announcement.
AMY GOODMAN : Wow! And did it ever happen?
SAMI AL- ARIAN : It never happened, of course. You know, at the time, we were protesting secret evidence. What happened after 9/11 is that they were arresting people with no evidence. I mean, we really went totally backward. And as I said, all the rules were no longer valid. So, you know, it&#8217;s a sad story in the history. One day it will be written.
But, you know, I&#8217;m so happy that a lot of people are pushing back. You know, at the beginning, there was this shock, where everybody was afraid, everybody was angry, everybody was stepping back. But after the abuses that we&#8217;ve witnessed in the past 10 years, a lot of people are stepping up. A lot of people are protesting. A lot of people are speaking out. We saw even some government contractors or officials, like Snowden, is crying out against what&#8217;s taking place. And hopefully, you know, the excesses of the surveillance and police state will be put in place.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, this is really an astonishing story. I don&#8217;t think anyone has actually heard what happened in those days leading up to the September 11th attacks and that you&#8217;ve told here. But I wanted to ask you, have you noticed any change whatsoever since the Obama administration came in, in terms of how some of these issues are being handled?
SAMI AL- ARIAN : You know, I&#8217;ve heard a lot from Obama, but it&#8217;s all rhetoric. You know, when it comes to actual policies, I haven&#8217;t seen much change. I mean, at the beginning, I give him the benefit of the doubt. You wait for a couple of years. He&#8217;s busy with the economic program. He&#8217;s busy with, you know, trying to get elected for the second term. But after six years, I haven&#8217;t really seen much change. And that is very distressing.
And I tell people, you know, change should come really from the bottom up. Very rarely you get change from the top down, until people stand up and speak out and campaign and go to their congressmen and senators and administration and voice opposition to these policies, that not only is going to affect Arab Americans and Muslim Americans, it&#8217;s going to affect every American. And we can&#8217;t advocate a policy where, you know, the rights of the minority could be taken out so that the majority could feel at ease, because eventually any—any things that will restrict—
AMY GOODMAN : Well, Sami Al-Arian, we&#8217;re going to have to leave it there. We seem to have just lost the connection, as well, in this exclusive broadcast with Professor Sami Al-Arian, who has just been deported from the United States after years in jail and then under house arrest, though a Florida jury refused to convict him on any count against him. And I also want to thank Laila Al-Arian, his daughter, speaking to us from Washington, D.C.
That does it for our broadcast. I&#8217;ll be interviewing Cecile Richards on Wednesday night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Check our website at democracynow.org. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The Palestinian activist and professor Sami Al-Arian has been deported this week from the United States. In one of the most controversial prosecutions of the post-9/11 era, Al-Arian was jailed in Florida for five-and-a-half years on what many described as trumped-up charges. He was arrested in 2003 at a time when he was one of the most prominent Palestinian activists in the United States. In addition to teaching at the University of South Florida, Al-Arian was a frequent media commentator and speaker at antiwar rallies. He co-founded the Tampa Bay Coalition for Peace and Justice and the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom. Between 1997 and 2001, he visited the White House four times. He actively campaigned for George W. Bush in the 2000 election. But life for Sami Al-Arian changed after the September 11th attacks.

AMYGOODMAN: On September 28th, 2001, Sami Al-Arian was interviewed on Fox News by Bill O’Reilly about former University of South Florida professor Ramadan Shalah, who went on to become the leader of the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Beginning the next day, the University of South Florida, where Al-Arian worked, was overwhelmed by hundreds of threatening letters and emails. Thirty-six hours after the interview, the university put Professor Al-Arian on paid leave. In October of 2002, I interviewed Professor Al-Arian here in New York when he spoke at the Not in Our Name rally in Central Park. I asked him about his appearance on Bill O’Reilly.

SAMI AL-ARIAN: The way it was—the interview went, the guy attacked me viciously. So, many emails and threatening phone calls came to me personally at the department. So the department put me on paid leave, and then they banned me after that from coming to campus, within three months, because of the—you know, the orchestrated campaign by pro-Zionist groups and also by some politicians and some appointed people, people appointed by Governor Bush, particularly members of the board of trustees at the university. They voted to terminate my employment in December of 2001. It hasn’t been finalized, because faculty unions and other professors from around the country, as well as the American Association of University Professors, have been protesting. And the AAUP has threatened that if they do terminate my employment, they will be censured, which is a black mark. So, eventually, the president opted to sue me in court, to get me fired through the court system.

AMYGOODMAN: So, the university has banned you, on what grounds?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: It’s not really clear, except, you know, they say that the campus was disrupted. And it goes like: Since people have threatened my life, the campus has not been secure, and the best way to secure it is to terminate my employment. I don’t think—it’s a bogus argument. I don’t think it’s going to fly. But that’s the essence of what they’re saying.

AMYGOODMAN: So the university is saying because your life has been threatened, they’re banning you.

SAMI AL-ARIAN: That’s right, exactly. Instead of going against the real terrorists, the perpetrators of the threats, they’re going after me.

AMYGOODMAN: The Palestinian activist and professor Sami Al-Arian speaking in October 2002. Four months after our interview, in February 2003, Al-Arian was arrested and accused of being a leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The Justice Department handed down a sweeping 50-count indictment against him and seven other men, charging them with conspiracy to commit murder, giving material support to terrorists, extortion, perjury and other offenses. He was held in solitary confinement leading up to the trial. This is an excerpt from the documentary USA vs. Al-Arian."

SAMI AL-ARIAN: And I was put in solitary confinement 23 hours a day—and sometimes, for weeks, 24 hours a day. I wasn’t allowed even to see my attorneys, when she comes in. I wasn’t allowed to call my family. For six months, I was not allowed to make a single phone call.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: At the end of his trial in December 2005, the jury failed to return a single guilty verdict. Al-Arian was acquitted on eight of 17 counts against him, and the jury deadlocked on the rest. Four months after the verdict, he agreed to plead guilty to one of the remaining charges in exchange for being released and deported. He was later found guilty of civil contempt for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury in another case. In the end, Al-Arian was jailed from February of 2003 until September of 2008. For three-and-a-half years, he was imprisoned in solitary confinement. He was then held under house arrest until this week, when he was deported to Turkey. Last year, a federal court dropped all charges against him.

AMYGOODMAN: Sami Al-Arian joins us now from Istanbul, Turkey, in his first broadcast interview since being deported. And we’re joined by his daughter, Laila Al-Arian, a Peabody Award-winning journalist based in Washington, D.C., co-author with Chris Hedges of the book Collateral Damage: America’s War Against Iraqi Civilians.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Sami Al-Arian, how does it feel to have left the United States, to have been deported to where you are right now in Turkey?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: It feels like I’m free, finally really feeling freedom for the first time in 12 years. I don’t have to watch over my back or my head, or think that someone is trying to monitor you or get you. So, it feels like you’re free.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And this whole period that you’ve been under, essentially, house arrest, could you talk about that experience, as well?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: I mean, it’s much better than prison, of course, but you’re under house arrest, so basically you’re confined to your living environment. And though there were no restrictions, other than that you can’t leave the house, you still know that you’re being monitored all over you. So it’s not really total freedom. And unfortunately, after 9/11, many Americans feel that they live in surveillance and police state, and that’s a very discomforting feeling.

AMYGOODMAN: Why did you choose to move to Turkey, Sami Al-Arian?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: Well, I actually applied to many countries, some in Latin America, some in the Middle East and Turkey. And I have friends who actually talked to the Turkish authorities, and they immediately made the decision to accept me. So, it’s a tribute to them and to their thinking, of that they value people who fight for freedom or have been dealt with unjustly. And I’m very grateful for that.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We’re also joined by Laila Al-Arian, your daughter. Laila, what’s the most important thing for Americans to understand about your father’s case and the injustices that occurred here?

LAILA AL-ARIAN: I think what’s really important to take note of is the fact that when my father was arrested nearly 12 years ago in February, on February 20th, 2003, John Ashcroft went on national television and made pretty extraordinary claims about who my father is, completely distorting and outright lying about my father, calling him a terrorist on national television. And, of course, years later, none of that has borne true. My father was acquitted by 12 ordinary jurors in Florida. He said from the very beginning this is a political case. And I think what people should take away from what has been a nightmare for our family is the fact that in the United States of America there’s no room for political prisoners, there’s no room for politically motivated prosecutions. And, you know, my father was vindicated, even if he did have to eventually leave the country. I think when we look back at this case in history, we’ll see that, you know, it’s really a shameful part of our history. And, you know, it won’t be—it won’t be something that anyone will look at with any kind of pride. So, I hope we learn the lessons from this case.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Laila, the impact on you and the other members of your family, the many years of this ordeal?

LAILA AL-ARIAN: Of course it’s impacted us personally. My sister, the youngest sibling, was nine years old when all of this began. She’s now about to graduate college. So you can just see how long this ordeal has lasted for us. You know, it’s been, in many ways, pretty destabilizing, feeling that we’ve been—not feeling, knowing, actually, that we’ve been under surveillance, even as children. So, when we were going over—you know, when my father was preparing for his trial, and his attorneys, we learned that, in fact, all of our phone calls were recorded, even as children. We had the opportunity to even listen to some of the phone calls between us and our friends when we were in grade school. It’s something that’s pretty psychologically jarring and traumatizing. So I think really feeling that every aspect of your life is under surveillance by the government, simply because my father was an outspoken Palestinian advocate, is something that I’ll never truly get over.

But at the same time, there’s been a lot of positive things that have come out of this case, a lot of the relationships we’ve formed with many supporters, many activists, who have really, you know, shown tremendous courage in standing up for my father and his rights, and that’s what we’ll really remember more than anything else.

AMYGOODMAN: Sami, if you could talk, from your own perspective, about what happened to you? I played that clip from 2002, when I interviewed you at a big peace rally that you were addressing here in New York. You would soon be arrested. Your case factored into a Senate race in Florida. Talk about your journey.

SAMI AL-ARIAN: It’s really a story of what happened after 9/11. After 9/11, for whatever reason, the forces of intolerance, exclusionary politics and hegemony really took center stage, where rational people were no longer able to advance any kind of dialogue or rationality in their dealings. So what you have here is people who pressured the government just to take retaliatory action against any activists. And if they had the opportunity to do that, they just went for it.

For instance, you know, my case was celebrated as being the first case after the PATRIOT Act, meaning—you know, they said that the intelligence people did not speak to the prosecution’s, and therefore the government, to actually prosecute criminals, they didn’t know anything about my activities. And that was patently false, because during my discovery I saw an earlier version of the indictment back in 2000, when we were very active politically and my brother-in-law was in immigration court. They really wanted to indict me and stop what—you know, the activity that we were doing. But somehow Janet Reno, Department of Justice, refused, refused to prosecute that case. And it was every other act that they said the prosecution didn’t know from the intelligence people, was there up to 2000, so that was patently false.

And it was so political case that, you know, all legal standards were just—were just ignored. You know, my speedy trial—I was denied speedy trial. You know, the judge asked me in April of 2003 if I’m going to waive my speedy trial. When I said no, that meant that they had to try me within 70 days. The government immediately objected and said they were not ready. And if they were not ready to try the case, why did they indict?

So if you go back and see the political nature of the case—when USF was in hot water because they wanted to terminate my employment, and they couldn’t do it because of the pressure that was coming from all over the place, we found, for instance, that the president of USF went to the U.S. attorney, in public, asking him to investigate. And at the end of the meeting, the U.S. attorney announces, in February of 2002, the empaneling of a grand jury. Now, grand juries are supposed to be in secret. And here we had the university president going to the government, asking them to bail her out, and at the end of the meeting, they announced the empaneling of a grand jury. And then nothing happens.

And I saw in discovery, for instance, when the government wanted to settle—I mean, sorry, when the university wanted to settle with me, and they offered me almost a million dollars to resign, the board of trustees chairman objected, because he had been calling me, you know, all kind of names up to that point. And he was the governor’s appointee, Jeb Bush’s appointee. So he goes to Jeb Bush, basically—and we have that information from their lawyer—and he asks to bail him out. And then, somehow, instead of offering me a settlement, they sue me in court in order to fire me. It was a delaying tactic. And I could see, during my discovery, how the speed-up of the grand jury went in August, September, October and so on, until the indictment came back in February.

And then, we saw, you know, that the—you know, during the superseding indictment, when they indicted earlier in 2003, they had 17 counts against me. But they knew that half of these counts, the statute of limitations had run out. And the judge kept telling them, "When are you going to supersede?" But they didn’t want to supersede with less counts, so they added more counts on some transactions that took place in Chicago that I had no knowledge of, and they knew that I had no knowledge of it. And when we went to trial, they produced zero evidence of that. And then the person who was actually on the phone calls, on the transactions, on the bank account, on the—on everything that had to deal with Chicago, was soon acquitted, and I wasn’t, because two jurors couldn’t bring themselves to acquit on all counts. So, you know, from start to finish, it was a political case, unfortunately, that took a very ugly turn. And, you know, thankfully, we had great jurors who could see through that, and they would not, at the end, go along and support the government’s case.

AMYGOODMAN: Sami Al-Arian, we have to break, but we’re going to come back to this discussion. Sami Al-Arian, prominent Palestinian activist and professor, has lived in the United States for the last 40 years, on Wednesday was deported to Turkey. He was previously accused of ties to the group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, but a Florida jury failed to return a single guilty verdict on any of the 17 charges against him. We’re talking to Sami Al-Arian in Istanbul, Turkey, and his daughter Laila, the Peabody Award-winning journalist based in Washington, D.C. We’ll continue with them in a moment.

[break]

AMYGOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, as we turn to an excerpt of the film, USA vs. Al-Arian. Sami Al-Arian’s son, in this excerpt, his son Ali, describes the night his father was arrested in February of 2003.

ALI AL-ARIAN: I woke up to—there was a guy just searching all over my room with a flashlight. And he had just like—I don’t remember. He was wearing just like all black. So he just starts going like this, like with the flashlight everywhere he put. And I guess he just saw me for a second. He just put it in my face, and I wake up. And I look, and the door was already open. And then, I was the last one to wake up. So I saw my dad. He was standing where the AC blows. He was standing on the wall with his hands up like this. So then I went to the living room, and I just see all these guys scattered all over the living room, like one police cop and just a million guys in suits. And then I just see like my mom and my two sisters crying and everything, and I knew what was going on.

AMYGOODMAN: That is Ali Al-Arian. We’re joined by Sami Al-Arian, who has just been deported to Turkey on Wednesday from the United States, after being held in prison for more than five years, and more three of those years in solitary confinement, then in house arrest for many years. We’re also joined by Sami Al-Arian’s daughter, Laila Al-Arian, who is a prominent journalist. She’s speaking to us from Washington, D.C. How old were you then, Laila, when your brother Ali is describing what took place? And where were you when your dad was arrested?

LAILA AL-ARIAN: I was actually the same age as my youngest sister is now. I was 21, studying at Georgetown University. And I actually heard the news in a phone call from an administrator who worked in the same office where I had my work-study job. And she called me to convey her sadness over the arrest. I had no idea, so of course I was really shocked to learn what happened and, you know, just tried to focus on graduating, really, at that point. And then, after that, I really started becoming involved in advocating for my father and raising awareness, not just about his case, but about the atrocious prison conditions that he was suffering under, which we talked about a little bit earlier. Throughout that time, he also went on three different hunger strikes to protest his prison conditions, but also the fact that a vindictive prosecutor, long after my father was acquitted by a jury, tried to ensnare him in another case up here in Virginia unrelated even to his own trial. So, you know, there were a number of times when we really had to raise awareness about his case, and that kind of became a full-time job for our family.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Sami Al-Arian, the fact that you had lived in the United States for 40 years and that you had been invited to the White House four times during the Bush years, the impact on you of this sudden turning against you by the government?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: Well, of course, I’m aware of the pressures that they were facing, as I said, after 9/11. But unfortunately, you know, most of the rules that govern the relationship between the citizens and the government were just scrapped. You know, the government has now—or at least after, shortly after 9/11, they just did whatever they thought they can get away with. You know, I remember one of the lawyers, who had access to some information, was that even the prosecutors themselves, when they went, before indictment, to Washington, D.C., telling Chertoff, who was at the time the head of the criminal section of the Justice Department, that some of these charges they couldn’t prove. He said, "Everything stays. Everything stays." So, you know, it’s very sad that you had to go through this.

You know, you’re right, I went to the White House several times, not just during the Bush, but even the Clinton administration. I was able to communicate, and that’s a tribute to the system, in fact, that I was able to go and meet with all kinds of leaders. You know, I met with Bush, Hillary, you know, Bill Clinton, all kinds of people in Congress, chairmen, speakers and so on and so forth. And the whole point was to engage politically, because there are certain causes that were of concern to me at the time. A lot of it has to do with civil rights and secret evidence. And I thought that we were making progress, that the politicians were really responsive to our plea and to our campaign against the use of secret evidence.

Even in the—a lot of people ask me, "Why did you support Bush?" Well, it wasn’t really supporting Bush per se. You now, I approached both the Gore campaign and the Bush campaign, and the Gore campaign, whose administration at the time was using secret evidence, against mostly Arabs and Muslims, they just ignored our pleas, whereas the Bush campaign gave us lip service, except at the last month, when the race was neck to neck. So I get a call from someone who was very close to Karl Rove, asking me personally how we can get the endorsement of the Muslim community. And my answer was that you need to—so he needs to say—the candidate, Bush, needs to say publicly that he’s against secret evidence and that he is for the bill that we were advancing in Congress. And to my surprise, the following day, during the second debate, he said these two things. You know, he was asked about racial profiling, and he came in saying, you know, "There’s another form of racial profiling used against Arab Americans. It’s called secret evidence. And I support the bill in Congress." And I get a call back, and said, "Now I delivered. Are you going to deliver?"

So it shows that empowerment of communities does work when you are active. And the Muslim leaders, the Arab—the Muslim American leaders actually met and decided to support Bush based on his stand on secret evidence. And the following week, they met and endorsed him, and they identified six states as being the swing states. And Florida was my—because I lived in Florida, it fell into me. And we did a lot of programs, again, based on this; it wasn’t based on Iraq or Palestine or other things. It really was based on that one issue. And he won by 537 votes. And obviously, we proved later on that we delivered to him 14,000 extra votes than what he would have got had we not intervened.

And then, the following month, you know, I get invited to the inauguration, and I get a thank you from Newt Gingrich and John Sununu and Tom Davis, that we really delivered that to Bush. And then we asked them to deliver for us secret evidence, you know, the bill against secret evidence. And they tell us that the Bush—because Ashcroft was delayed, his confirmation was delayed, he said it’s going to take time to study the issue. But I get a call back in August of 2001 basically telling me, from the same person, that they’ve studied the issue, and we were going to get—to hear good news. And he asked me to invite all the Arab and Muslim leaders to Washington, D.C., at the White House, in which that news would have been announced.

AMYGOODMAN: And then what happened? I think it might have—our feed to Istanbul, Turkey, might have frozen, but let’s see if he came back. Sami, you left us by saying then you got a call where you were supposed to invite everyone to Washington for an important announcement.

SAMI AL-ARIAN: Right. And I did invite everybody, and I briefed them, and I told them that there will be an announcement, an important announcement, against the use of secret evidence by Bush that afternoon. And everybody was in town. Unfortunately, it was on 9/11. It was 3:00 on 9/11. So that meeting never happened. But everybody was asking, "How come all these Arab and Muslim leaders were in Washington, even though the airspace was closed for several days?" And the reason they were behind Bush when he visited a mosque and when he went to the National Cathedral is because they were already there. They were going to meet with him for that announcement.

AMYGOODMAN: Wow! And did it ever happen?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: It never happened, of course. You know, at the time, we were protesting secret evidence. What happened after 9/11 is that they were arresting people with no evidence. I mean, we really went totally backward. And as I said, all the rules were no longer valid. So, you know, it’s a sad story in the history. One day it will be written.

But, you know, I’m so happy that a lot of people are pushing back. You know, at the beginning, there was this shock, where everybody was afraid, everybody was angry, everybody was stepping back. But after the abuses that we’ve witnessed in the past 10 years, a lot of people are stepping up. A lot of people are protesting. A lot of people are speaking out. We saw even some government contractors or officials, like Snowden, is crying out against what’s taking place. And hopefully, you know, the excesses of the surveillance and police state will be put in place.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, this is really an astonishing story. I don’t think anyone has actually heard what happened in those days leading up to the September 11th attacks and that you’ve told here. But I wanted to ask you, have you noticed any change whatsoever since the Obama administration came in, in terms of how some of these issues are being handled?

SAMI AL-ARIAN: You know, I’ve heard a lot from Obama, but it’s all rhetoric. You know, when it comes to actual policies, I haven’t seen much change. I mean, at the beginning, I give him the benefit of the doubt. You wait for a couple of years. He’s busy with the economic program. He’s busy with, you know, trying to get elected for the second term. But after six years, I haven’t really seen much change. And that is very distressing.

And I tell people, you know, change should come really from the bottom up. Very rarely you get change from the top down, until people stand up and speak out and campaign and go to their congressmen and senators and administration and voice opposition to these policies, that not only is going to affect Arab Americans and Muslim Americans, it’s going to affect every American. And we can’t advocate a policy where, you know, the rights of the minority could be taken out so that the majority could feel at ease, because eventually any—any things that will restrict—

AMYGOODMAN: Well, Sami Al-Arian, we’re going to have to leave it there. We seem to have just lost the connection, as well, in this exclusive broadcast with Professor Sami Al-Arian, who has just been deported from the United States after years in jail and then under house arrest, though a Florida jury refused to convict him on any count against him. And I also want to thank Laila Al-Arian, his daughter, speaking to us from Washington, D.C.

That does it for our broadcast. I’ll be interviewing Cecile Richards on Wednesday night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Check our website at democracynow.org.

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Fri, 06 Feb 2015 00:00:00 -0500Hailed as U.S. Counterterrorism Model in Middle East, Yemen Teeters on the Brink of Collapsehttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/1/23/hailed_as_us_counterterrorism_model_in
tag:democracynow.org,2015-01-23:en/story/b74e37 JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We begin in Yemen, which is teetering on the brink of collapse after the U.S.-backed president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, his prime minister and entire cabinet resigned on Thursday. The exodus came just 24 hours after Shia Houthi rebels stormed the presidential compound in the capital city of Sana&#8217;a. Hadi said he could not continue ruling after Houthis allegedly broke a peace deal to retreat from key positions in return for increased political power. The Houthis appear to have major backing from longtime president Ali Abdullah Saleh, the ousted leader who was forced from office in a popular uprising in 2011.
AMY GOODMAN : The Obama administration had praised the Yemeni government as being a model for &quot;successful&quot; counterterrorism partnerships, but on Thursday the U.S. announced it was pulling more staff out of its embassy in Yemen. Some experts warn the developments in Yemen could result in civil war and help al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula gain more power. Meanwhile, Oxfam is warning more than half of Yemen&#8217;s population needs aid, and a humanitarian crisis of extreme proportions is at risk of unfolding in the country if instability continues. Ten million Yemenis do not have enough to eat, including 850,000 acutely malnourished children.
For more, we go to London, where we&#8217;re joined by Iona Craig. She&#8217;s a journalist who was based in Sana&#8217;a, Yemen, for four years as the Yemen correspondent for The Times of London, was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2014.
Iona, welcome back to Democracy Now! Talk about what has taken place.
IONA CRAIG : I think what we&#8217;ve seen in the last few days is pretty unprecedented in terms of Yemen, and I think what&#8217;s happened now with Hadi handing in his resignation, the prime minister and the cabinet, is really probably the smartest thing they could have done. They were backed into a corner by the Houthis, and quite literally, the Houthis had surrounded Hadi&#8217;s house. They obviously couldn&#8217;t and hadn&#8217;t taken them on militarily, in a fight that they were unlikely to be able to win. And so this was the only way for them to turn around to the Houthis and say, &quot;No, this is enough.&quot;
And now we have the prospect of an emergency meeting of the Parliament on Sunday, when Hadi&#8217;s resignation will be put forward. Now, they have the option to reject that resignation, which means that Hadi would still be president after that, unless he then hands his resignation in again within three months. So it may actually be that Hadi stays and manages to survive all of this.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Iona, given the constant turbulence within the country, what&#8217;s the impact on some of the regional powers—obviously, Iran and the United States and Saudi Arabia?
IONA CRAIG : Well, really, you know, the reason why the international community has been promoting and supporting Hadi is because, for them, there wasn&#8217;t another option. They&#8217;ve been backing this transition deal from the beginning. It was created initially as Ali Abdullah Saleh signed the deal at the end of 2011 in order to step down, this deal called the GCC deal. But it really originated—and it&#8217;s an open secret in Sana&#8217;a—from the American Embassy. And the reason we know that is that the politicians in Yemen that first saw it could tell that it was translated from English. So, that transition deal is what the international community have been backing. And that transition deal is really what has brought this to this place today, because it never truly addressed the underlying problems in Yemen. It was all about reshuffling power in order to concentrate on the security issues within Yemen, without actually making the changes that Yemenis have been demanding. So, issues like the Houthis, who were a marginalized group and persecuted under Ali Abdullah Saleh, the issue of southern secession, they were never truly addressed throughout this period. And now this has come to a head now with the Houthis taking their own action to get what they want. So the international community is partly responsible for the situation that Yemen is now in. But, of course, their focus still remains on the security issues in Yemen.
AMY GOODMAN : I want to turn to comments President Obama made last summer when he announced additional U.S. military support to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. In response to a question, President Obama invoked U.S. policy in Yemen as a possible model for Iraq and Syria. This is part of what he said.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA : You look at a country like Yemen, a very impoverished country and one that has its own sectarian or ethnic divisions, there&#8217;s—we do have a committed partner in President Hadi and his government, and we have been able to help to develop their capacities without putting large numbers of U.S. troops on the ground, at the same time as we&#8217;ve got enough CT, or counterterrorism, capabilities that we&#8217;re able to go after folks that might try to hit our embassy or might be trying to export terrorism into Europe or the United States.
AMY GOODMAN : That was President Obama over the summer. Your response, Iona Craig?
IONA CRAIG : Well, I think this really kind of goes back to what I just mentioned. The international focus has always been about security in Yemen. So, even when Ali Abdullah Saleh was in power, they backed him because they could work with him and, you know, to carry out the operations that they wanted, to use drone strikes in Yemen. And there was no plan B. There was no &quot;What will we do if Ali Abdullah Saleh is not there?&quot; And similarly, then, with Hadi. They knew Hadi had been vice president under Ali Abdullah Saleh. It was someone they knew they could work with. They built on the partnership. And again, now, there is—there is no plan B. So if Hadi goes, this leaves them in a position—you know, in a really bad position of who now are they dealing with.
As for the issue of the Yemen model, clearly now that&#8217;s something of a joke, really. The Yemen model has all but collapsed. The fighting against al-Qaeda on the ground has actually been done now by the Houthis, but it&#8217;s actually made the issue and the problem of al-Qaeda worse in Yemen, anyway. The violence being carried out by al-Qaeda has increased hugely since the Houthis took Sana&#8217;a in September. But, you know—and again, looking at those Oxfam figures, the underlying problems in Yemen, you have—now those figures have gone to 16 million people in need of humanitarian aid. The last figures that came out said 14.7 million, out of a population of 25. So, whilst the international community focuses on the security issues, you&#8217;ve got an economy that&#8217;s collapsing, you&#8217;ve got a rising humanitarian crisis and political issues that haven&#8217;t been dealt with. So, this kind of short-term thinking about the security situation in Yemen is really never going to get to the bottom of the political problems, the economic problems and the humanitarian issues that all feed into this in the end.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you mentioned one of the other underlying problems being an ongoing secessionist movement. Most Americans here have short memories. They forget that it wasn&#8217;t long ago when there was a separate Marxist state, the Democratic Republic of Yemen, in a huge portion of what is now Yemen. Could you talk about that secessionist movement in its current form?
IONA CRAIG : Yes, the Southern Movement, or al-Hirak al-Janoubi, as it&#8217;s known in Yemen, has been around for many years now, technically since 2007. But North and South Yemen, we unified in 1990, and then there was a brief civil war in 1994, and the south was very much crushed in that. But this call for secession has been increasing rapidly over the last few years, particularly obviously since 2011. But the international community again has failed to really engage with the southerners. And they particularly reached out to the U.K., actually, because obviously the British previously had control of Aden, the southern city, for many years. And they reached out to the international community. And really, the international community didn&#8217;t—hasn&#8217;t engaged with them, mainly because they feel that if they engage with the south, then it&#8217;s recognizing their calls for secession, and they don&#8217;t want Yemen to break up, because they think it will impact the security situation. So, in that void, it&#8217;s actually Iran that a lot of the time in the south has stepped in and has engaged with the southerners, because nobody else will. And they have increasingly been engaging with them and supporting them.
But we&#8217;ve also got a situation now in the south over the last 24 hours, since everything&#8217;s happened in Sana&#8217;a, where they are now taking action. There have been big protests in the south today. They have said—you know, put out a message saying they will refuse to take orders now from Sana&#8217;a because of what&#8217;s happening with the Houthis. And it now appears that the Houthis are in charge. But, you know, there&#8217;s a lot of politicking going on in Aden right now. So you&#8217;ve got President Hadi with his supporters and his militiamen and gunmen on the streets. You&#8217;ve also got the Houthis, supported by Ali Abdullah Saleh, been trying to make gains in Aden, as well. So, it&#8217;s going to come to a head in the south, and that looks like it&#8217;s going to happen sooner rather than later now, because of what&#8217;s happening in Sana&#8217;a.
AMY GOODMAN : Will Saleh return as president?
IONA CRAIG : Ali Abdullah Saleh?
AMY GOODMAN : Yes.
IONA CRAIG : I think that&#8217;s very unlikely, but I think the chances of Ahmed Ali, his son, returning as president are possible. I think that&#8217;s distinctly possible. It may not happen in the next week, but when it comes the time of presidential elections—goodness knows when that will happen now—but I think there is a possibility that Ahmed Ali, his son, could rule Yemen. And right now, you know, for some Yemenis, they would throw up their hands and say, you know, security, some form of stability, some form of governance is better than nothing. They&#8217;re in a pretty dire situation right now with an economy that&#8217;s collapsing and this humanitarian crisis going on at the same time. And people most of the time just want stability so they can carry on with their lives.
AMY GOODMAN : Iona Craig, we want to thank you very much for being with us. She&#8217;s speaking to us from London, but she lived for four years in Sana&#8217;a, in the capital of Yemen, reporting for The Times of London, winner of the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We begin in Yemen, which is teetering on the brink of collapse after the U.S.-backed president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, his prime minister and entire cabinet resigned on Thursday. The exodus came just 24 hours after Shia Houthi rebels stormed the presidential compound in the capital city of Sana’a. Hadi said he could not continue ruling after Houthis allegedly broke a peace deal to retreat from key positions in return for increased political power. The Houthis appear to have major backing from longtime president Ali Abdullah Saleh, the ousted leader who was forced from office in a popular uprising in 2011.

AMYGOODMAN: The Obama administration had praised the Yemeni government as being a model for "successful" counterterrorism partnerships, but on Thursday the U.S. announced it was pulling more staff out of its embassy in Yemen. Some experts warn the developments in Yemen could result in civil war and help al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula gain more power. Meanwhile, Oxfam is warning more than half of Yemen’s population needs aid, and a humanitarian crisis of extreme proportions is at risk of unfolding in the country if instability continues. Ten million Yemenis do not have enough to eat, including 850,000 acutely malnourished children.

For more, we go to London, where we’re joined by Iona Craig. She’s a journalist who was based in Sana’a, Yemen, for four years as the Yemen correspondent for The Times of London, was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2014.

Iona, welcome back to Democracy Now! Talk about what has taken place.

IONACRAIG: I think what we’ve seen in the last few days is pretty unprecedented in terms of Yemen, and I think what’s happened now with Hadi handing in his resignation, the prime minister and the cabinet, is really probably the smartest thing they could have done. They were backed into a corner by the Houthis, and quite literally, the Houthis had surrounded Hadi’s house. They obviously couldn’t and hadn’t taken them on militarily, in a fight that they were unlikely to be able to win. And so this was the only way for them to turn around to the Houthis and say, "No, this is enough."

And now we have the prospect of an emergency meeting of the Parliament on Sunday, when Hadi’s resignation will be put forward. Now, they have the option to reject that resignation, which means that Hadi would still be president after that, unless he then hands his resignation in again within three months. So it may actually be that Hadi stays and manages to survive all of this.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Iona, given the constant turbulence within the country, what’s the impact on some of the regional powers—obviously, Iran and the United States and Saudi Arabia?

IONACRAIG: Well, really, you know, the reason why the international community has been promoting and supporting Hadi is because, for them, there wasn’t another option. They’ve been backing this transition deal from the beginning. It was created initially as Ali Abdullah Saleh signed the deal at the end of 2011 in order to step down, this deal called the GCC deal. But it really originated—and it’s an open secret in Sana’a—from the American Embassy. And the reason we know that is that the politicians in Yemen that first saw it could tell that it was translated from English. So, that transition deal is what the international community have been backing. And that transition deal is really what has brought this to this place today, because it never truly addressed the underlying problems in Yemen. It was all about reshuffling power in order to concentrate on the security issues within Yemen, without actually making the changes that Yemenis have been demanding. So, issues like the Houthis, who were a marginalized group and persecuted under Ali Abdullah Saleh, the issue of southern secession, they were never truly addressed throughout this period. And now this has come to a head now with the Houthis taking their own action to get what they want. So the international community is partly responsible for the situation that Yemen is now in. But, of course, their focus still remains on the security issues in Yemen.

AMYGOODMAN: I want to turn to comments President Obama made last summer when he announced additional U.S. military support to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. In response to a question, President Obama invoked U.S. policy in Yemen as a possible model for Iraq and Syria. This is part of what he said.

PRESIDENTBARACKOBAMA: You look at a country like Yemen, a very impoverished country and one that has its own sectarian or ethnic divisions, there’s—we do have a committed partner in President Hadi and his government, and we have been able to help to develop their capacities without putting large numbers of U.S. troops on the ground, at the same time as we’ve got enough CT, or counterterrorism, capabilities that we’re able to go after folks that might try to hit our embassy or might be trying to export terrorism into Europe or the United States.

AMYGOODMAN: That was President Obama over the summer. Your response, Iona Craig?

IONACRAIG: Well, I think this really kind of goes back to what I just mentioned. The international focus has always been about security in Yemen. So, even when Ali Abdullah Saleh was in power, they backed him because they could work with him and, you know, to carry out the operations that they wanted, to use drone strikes in Yemen. And there was no plan B. There was no "What will we do if Ali Abdullah Saleh is not there?" And similarly, then, with Hadi. They knew Hadi had been vice president under Ali Abdullah Saleh. It was someone they knew they could work with. They built on the partnership. And again, now, there is—there is no plan B. So if Hadi goes, this leaves them in a position—you know, in a really bad position of who now are they dealing with.

As for the issue of the Yemen model, clearly now that’s something of a joke, really. The Yemen model has all but collapsed. The fighting against al-Qaeda on the ground has actually been done now by the Houthis, but it’s actually made the issue and the problem of al-Qaeda worse in Yemen, anyway. The violence being carried out by al-Qaeda has increased hugely since the Houthis took Sana’a in September. But, you know—and again, looking at those Oxfam figures, the underlying problems in Yemen, you have—now those figures have gone to 16 million people in need of humanitarian aid. The last figures that came out said 14.7 million, out of a population of 25. So, whilst the international community focuses on the security issues, you’ve got an economy that’s collapsing, you’ve got a rising humanitarian crisis and political issues that haven’t been dealt with. So, this kind of short-term thinking about the security situation in Yemen is really never going to get to the bottom of the political problems, the economic problems and the humanitarian issues that all feed into this in the end.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you mentioned one of the other underlying problems being an ongoing secessionist movement. Most Americans here have short memories. They forget that it wasn’t long ago when there was a separate Marxist state, the Democratic Republic of Yemen, in a huge portion of what is now Yemen. Could you talk about that secessionist movement in its current form?

IONACRAIG: Yes, the Southern Movement, or al-Hirak al-Janoubi, as it’s known in Yemen, has been around for many years now, technically since 2007. But North and South Yemen, we unified in 1990, and then there was a brief civil war in 1994, and the south was very much crushed in that. But this call for secession has been increasing rapidly over the last few years, particularly obviously since 2011. But the international community again has failed to really engage with the southerners. And they particularly reached out to the U.K., actually, because obviously the British previously had control of Aden, the southern city, for many years. And they reached out to the international community. And really, the international community didn’t—hasn’t engaged with them, mainly because they feel that if they engage with the south, then it’s recognizing their calls for secession, and they don’t want Yemen to break up, because they think it will impact the security situation. So, in that void, it’s actually Iran that a lot of the time in the south has stepped in and has engaged with the southerners, because nobody else will. And they have increasingly been engaging with them and supporting them.

But we’ve also got a situation now in the south over the last 24 hours, since everything’s happened in Sana’a, where they are now taking action. There have been big protests in the south today. They have said—you know, put out a message saying they will refuse to take orders now from Sana’a because of what’s happening with the Houthis. And it now appears that the Houthis are in charge. But, you know, there’s a lot of politicking going on in Aden right now. So you’ve got President Hadi with his supporters and his militiamen and gunmen on the streets. You’ve also got the Houthis, supported by Ali Abdullah Saleh, been trying to make gains in Aden, as well. So, it’s going to come to a head in the south, and that looks like it’s going to happen sooner rather than later now, because of what’s happening in Sana’a.

AMYGOODMAN: Will Saleh return as president?

IONACRAIG: Ali Abdullah Saleh?

AMYGOODMAN: Yes.

IONACRAIG: I think that’s very unlikely, but I think the chances of Ahmed Ali, his son, returning as president are possible. I think that’s distinctly possible. It may not happen in the next week, but when it comes the time of presidential elections—goodness knows when that will happen now—but I think there is a possibility that Ahmed Ali, his son, could rule Yemen. And right now, you know, for some Yemenis, they would throw up their hands and say, you know, security, some form of stability, some form of governance is better than nothing. They’re in a pretty dire situation right now with an economy that’s collapsing and this humanitarian crisis going on at the same time. And people most of the time just want stability so they can carry on with their lives.

AMYGOODMAN: Iona Craig, we want to thank you very much for being with us. She’s speaking to us from London, but she lived for four years in Sana’a, in the capital of Yemen, reporting for The Times of London, winner of the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism.

Click here to watch our interview with Slahi’s editor, Larry Siems, his lawyer, Nancy Hollander, and retired Air Force Col. Morris Davis. Davis says he met with Slahi shortly before he resigned as the former chief military prosecutor at Guantánamo Bay in 2007, and argues he is "no more a terrorist than Forrest Gump."

Democracy Now! has regularly covered the stories of those imprisoned at the U.S. detention facility located in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, since former President George W. Bush began the so-called war on terror. The first captives arrived at the detention camp on January 11, 2002. Browse an archive of our reports here.

The American Team Takes Over ... Arrival at Bagram ... Bagram to GTMO ... GTMO, the New Home ... One Day in Paradise, the Next in Hell

July __, 2002, 10 p.m.

The music was off. The conversations of the guards faded away. The truck emptied. I felt alone in the hearse truck. The waiting didn’t last: I felt the presence of new people, a silent team. I don’t remember a single word during the whole rendition to follow.

A person was undoing the chains on my wrists. He undid the first hand, and another guy grabbed that hand and bent it while a third person was putting on the new, firmer and heavier shackles. Now my hands were shackled in front of me.

Somebody started to rip my clothes with something like a scissors. I was like, What the heck is going on? I started to worry about the trip I neither wanted nor initiated. Somebody else was deciding everything for me; I had all the worries in the world but making a decision. Many thoughts went quickly through my head. The optimistic thoughts suggested, 'Maybe you’re in the hands of Americans, but don’t worry, they just want to take you home, and to make sure that everything goes in secrecy.' The pessimistic ones went, 'You screwed up! The Americans managed to pin some shit on you, and they’re taking you to U.S. prisons for the rest of your life.'

I was stripped naked. It was humiliating, but the blindfold helped me miss the nasty look of my naked body. During the whole procedure, the only prayer I could remember was the crisis prayer, Ya hayyu! Ya kayyum! and I was mumbling it all the time. Whenever I came to be in a similar situation, I would forget all my prayers except the crisis prayer, which I learned from life of our Prophet, Peace be upon him.

One of the team wrapped a diaper around my private parts. Only then was I dead sure that the plane was heading to the U.S. Now I started to convince myself that “every thing’s gonna be alright.” My only worry was about my family seeing me on TV in such a degrading situation. I was so skinny. I’ve been always, but never that skinny: my street clothes had become so loose that I looked like a small cat in a big bag.

When the U.S. team finished putting me in the clothes they tailored for me, a guy removed my blindfold for a moment. I couldn’t see much because he directed the flashlight into my eyes. He was wrapped from hair to toe in a black uniform. He opened his mouth and stuck his tongue out, gesturing for me to do the same, a kind of AHH test which I took without resistance. I saw part of his very pale, blond-haired arm, which cemented my theory of being in Uncle Sam’s hands.

The blindfold was pushed down. The whole time I was listening to loud plane engines; I very much believe that some planes were landing and others taking off. I felt my “special” plane approaching, or the truck approaching the plane, I don’t recall anymore. But I do recall that when the escort grabbed me from the truck, there was no space between the truck and the airplane stairs. I was so exhausted, sick, and tired that I couldn’t walk, which compelled the escort to pull me up the steps like a dead body.

Inside the plane it was very cold. I was laid on a sofa and the guards shackled me, mostly likely to the floor. I felt a blanket put over me; though very thin, it comforted me.

I relaxed and gave myself to my dreams. I was thinking about different members of my family I would never see again. How sad would they be! I was crying silently and without tears; for some reason, I gave all my tears at the beginning of the expedition, which was like the boundary between death and life. I wished I were better to people. I wished I were better to my family. I regretted every mistake I made in my life, toward God, toward my family, toward anybody!

I was thinking about life in an American prison. I was thinking about documentaries I had seen about their prisons, and the harshness with which they treat their prisoners. I wished I were blind or had some kind of handicap, so they would put me in isolation and give me some kind of humane treatment and protection. I was thinking, What will the first hearing with the judge be like? Do I have a chance to get due process in a country so full of hatred against Muslims? Am I really already convicted, even before I get the chance to defend myself ?

I drowned in these painful dreams in the warmth of the blanket. Every once in a while the pain of the urine urge pinched me. The diaper didn’t work with me: I could not convince my brain to give the signal to my bladder. The harder I tried, the firmer my brain became. The guard beside me kept pouring water bottle caps in my mouth, which worsened my situation. There was no refusing it, either you swallow or you choke. Lying on one side was killing me beyond belief, but every attempt to change my position ended in failure, for a strong hand pushed me back to the same position.

I could tell that the plane was a big jet, which led me to believe that flight was direct to the U.S. But after about five hours, the plane started to lose altitude and smoothly hit the runway. I realized the U.S. is a little bit farther than that. Where are we? In Ramstein, Germany? Yes! Ramstein it is: in Ramstein there’s a U.S. military airport for transiting planes from the Middle East; we’re going to stop here for fuel. But as soon as the plane landed, the guards started to change my metal chains for plastic ones that cut my ankles painfully on the short walk to a helicopter. One of the guards, while pulling me out of the plane, tapped me on the shoulder as if to say, “you’re gonna be alright.” As in agony as I was, that gesture gave me hope that there were still some human beings among the people who were dealing with me.

When the sun hit me, the question popped up again: Where am I? Yes, Germany it is: it was July and the sun rises early. But why Germany? I had done no crimes in Germany! What shit did they pull on me? And yet the German legal system was by far a better choice for me; I know the procedures and speak the language. Moreover, the German system is somewhat transparent, and there are no two and three hundred years sentences. I had little to worry about: a German judge will face me and show me whatever the government has brought against me, and then I’m going to be sent to a temporary jail until my case is decided. I won’t be subject to torture, and I won’t have to see the evil faces of interrogators.

After about ten minutes the helicopter landed and I was taken into a truck, with a guard on either side. The chauffeur and his neighbor were talking in a language I had never heard before. I thought, What the heck are they speaking, maybe Filipino? I thought of the Philippines because I’m aware of the huge U.S. military presence there. Oh, yes, Philippines it is: they conspired with the U.S. and pulled some shit on me. What would the questions of their judge be? By now, though, I just wanted to arrive and take a pee, and after that they can do whatever they please. Please let me arrive! I thought; After that you may kill me!

The guards pulled me out of the truck after a five-minute drive, and it felt as if they put me in a hall. They forced me to kneel and bend my head down: I should remain in that position until they grabbed me. They yelled, “Do not move.” Before worrying about anything else, I took my most remarkable urine since I was born. It was such a relief; I felt I was released and sent back home. All of a sudden my worries faded away, and I smiled inside. Nobody noticed what I did.

About a quarter of an hour later, some guards pulled me and towed me to a room where they obviously had “processed” many detainees. Once I entered the room, the guards took the gear off my head. Oh, my ears ached so badly, and so did my head; actually my whole body was conspiring against me. I could barely stand. The guards started to deprive me of my clothes, and soon I stood there as naked as my mother bore me. I stood there for the first time in front of U.S. soldiers, not on TV, this was for real. I had the most common reaction, covering my private parts with my hands. I also quietly started to recite the crisis prayer, Ya hayyu! Ya kayyum! Nobody stopped me from praying; however, one of the MPs was staring at me with his eyes full of hatred. Later on he would order me to stop looking around in the room.

A __________________________ medic gave me a quick medical check, after which I was wrapped in Afghani cloths. Yes, Afghani clothes in the Philippines! Of course I was chained, hands and feet tied to my waist. My hands, moreover, were put in mittens. Now I’m ready for action! What action? No clue!

The escort team pulled me blindfolded to a neighboring interrogation room. As soon as I entered the room, several people started to shout and throw heavy things against the wall. In the melee, I could distinguish the following questions:

A very quick analysis went through my brain: the individuals in those questions were leading a country, and now they’re a bunch of fugitives! The interrogators missed a couple of things. First, they had just briefed me about the latest news: Afghanistan is taken over, but the high level people have not been captured. Second, I turned myself in about the time when the war against terrorism started, and since then I have been in a Jordanian prison, literally cut off from the rest of the world. So how am I supposed to know about the U.S. taking over Afghanistan, let alone about its leaders having fled? Not to mention where they are now.

I humbly replied, “I don’t know!”

“You’re a liar!” shouted one of them in broken Arabic.

“No, I’m not lying, I was captured so and so, and I only knowAbu Hafs..” I said, in a quick summary of my whole story.

“We should interrogate these motherfuckers like the Israelis do.”

“What do they do? ” asked another.

“They strip them naked and interrogate them!”

“Maybe we should!” suggested another. Chairs were still flying around and hitting the walls and the floor. I knew it was only a show of force, and the establishment of fear and anxiety. I went with the flow and even shook myself more than necessary. I didn’t believe that Americans torture, even though I had always considered it a remote possibility.

“I am gonna interrogate you later on,” said one, and the U.S. interpreter repeated the same in Arabic.

“Take him to the Hotel,” suggested the interrogator. Thistime the interpreter didn’t translate.

And so was the first interrogation done. Before the escort grabbed me, in my terrorizing fear, I tried to connect with the interpreter.

“Where did you learn such good Arabic? ” I asked.

“In the U.S.!” he replied, sounding flattered. In fact, he didn’t speak good Arabic; I just was trying to make some friends.

The escort team led me away. “You speak English,” one of them said in a thick Asian accent.

“A little bit,” I replied. He laughed, and so did his colleague. I felt like a human being leading a casual conversation. I said to myself, Look how friendly the Americans are: they’re gonna put you in a Hotel, interrogate you for a couple of days, and then fly you home safely. There’s no place for worry. The U.S. just wants to check everything, and since you’re innocent, they’re gonna find that out. For Pete’s sake, you’re on a base in Philippines; even though it’s a place at the edge of legality, it’s just temporary. The fact that one of the guards sounded Asian strengthened my wrong theory of being in the Philippines.

I soon arrived, not at a Hotel but at a wooden cell with neither a bathroom nor a sink. From the modest furniture — a weathered, thin mattress and an old blanket — you could tell there had been somebody here. I was kind of happy for having left Jordan, the place of randomness, but I was worried about the prayers I could not perform, and I wanted to know how many prayers I missed on the trip. The guard of the cell was a small, skinny white _______, a fact which gave me more comfort: for the last eight months I had been dealt with solely by big, muscular males.

I asked about the time, and ____ told me it was about eleven, if I remember correctly. I had one more question.

“What day is it?”

“I don’t know, every day here is the same,” _ –_ replied. I realized I had asked too much; _ –_ wasn’t even supposed to tell me the time, as I would learn later.

I found a Koran gently placed on some water bottles. I realized I was not alone in the jail, which was surely not a Hotel.

As it turned out, I was delivered to the wrong cell. Suddenly, I saw the weathered feet of a detainee whose face I couldn’t see because it was covered with a black bag. Black bags, I soon would learn, were put on everybody’s heads to blindfold them and make them unrecognizable, including the writer. Honestly, I didn’t want to see the face of the detainee, just in case he was in pain or suffering, because I hate to see people suffering; it drives me crazy. I’ll never forget the moans and cries of the poor detainees in Jordan when they were suffering torture. I remember putting my hands over my ears to stop myself from hearing the cries, but no matter how hard I tried, I was still able to hear the suffering. It was awful, even worse than torture.

The _______ guard at my door stopped the escort team and organized my transfer to another cell. It was the same as the one I was just in, but in the facing wall. In the room there was a half-full water bottle, the label of which was written in Russian; I wished I had learned Russian. I said to myself, a U.S. base in the Philippines, with water bottles from Russia? The U.S. doesn’t need supplies from Russia, and besides, geographically it makes no sense. Where am I? Maybe in a former Russian Republic, like Tajikstan? All I know is that I don’t know!

The cell had no facility to take care of the natural business. Washing for prayer was impossible and forbidden. There was no clue as to the Kibla, the direction of Mecca. I did what I could. My next door neighbor was mentally sick; he was shouting in a language with which I was not familiar. I later learned that he was a Taliban leader.

Later on that day, July 20, 2002, the guards pulled me for routine police work, fingerprints, height, weight, etcetera. I was offered _________ as interpreter. It was obvious that Arabic was not ____ first language. ____ taught me the rules: no speaking, no praying loudly, no washing for prayer, and a bunch of other nos in that direction. The guard asked me whether I wanted to use the bathroom. I thought he meant a place where you can shower; “Yes,” I said. The bathroom was a barrel filled with human waste. It was the most disgusting bathroom I ever saw. The guards had to watch you while you were taking care of business. I couldn’t eat the food — the food in Jordan was, by far, better than the cold MREs I got in Bagram — so I didn’t really have to use the bathroom. To pee, I would use the empty water bottles I had in my room. The hygienic situation was not exactly perfect; sometimes when the bottle got filled, I continued on the floor, making sure that it didn’t go all the way to the door.

For the next several nights in isolation, I got a funny guard who was trying to convert me to Christianity. I enjoyed the conversations, though my English was very basic. My dialogue partner was young, religious, and energetic. He liked Bush (“the true religious leader,” according to him); he hated Bill Clinton (“the Infidel”). He loved the dollar and hated the Euro. He had his copy of the bible on him all the time, and whenever the opportunity arose he read me stories, most of which were from the Old Testament. I wouldn’t have been able to understand them if I hadn’t read the bible in Arabic several times — not to mention that the versions of the stories are not that far from the ones in the Koran. I had studied the Bible in the Jordanian prison; I asked for a copy, and they offered me one. It was very helpful in understanding Western societies, even though many of them deny being influenced by religious scriptures. I didn’t try to argue with him: I was happy to have somebody to talk to. He and I were unanimous that the religious scriptures, including the Koran, must have come from the same source. As it turned out, the hot-tempered soldier’s knowledge about his religion was very shallow. Nonetheless I enjoyed him being my guard. He gave me more time on the bathroom, and he even looked away when I used the barrel.

I asked him about my situation. “You’re not a criminal, because they put the criminals in the other side,” he told me, gesturing with his hand. I thought about those “criminals” and pictured a bunch of young Muslims, and how hard their situation could be. I felt bad. As it turned out, later on I was transferred to these “criminals,” and became a “high priority criminal.” I was kind of ashamed when the same guard saw me later with the “criminals,” after he had told me that I was going to be released at most after three days. He acted normally, but he didn’t have that much freedom to talk to me about religion there because of his numerous colleagues. Other detainees told me that he was not bad toward them, either.

The second or the third night _________ pulled me out of my cell himself and led me to an interrogation, where the same ___________Arabic already had taken a seat. _________________________________________________
_________________________________. You could tell he was the right man for the job: he was the kind of man who wouldn’t mind doing the dirty work. The detainees back in Bagram used to call him ________________; he reportedly was responsible for torturing even innocent individuals the government released.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ didn’t need to shackle me because I was in shackles 24 hours a day. I slept, ate, used the bathroom while completely shackled, hand to feet. _________ opened a file in his hand ______________________________________ and started by means of the interpreter. _________ was asking me general questions about my life and my background. When he asked me, “What languages do you speak? ” he didn’t believe me; he laughed along with the interpreter, saying, “Haha, you speak German? Wait, we’re gonna check.”
Suddenly _________________________________________________ the room _______________________________________________________________________. There was no mistaking it, he was ___________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.

“Ja Wohl,” I replied. ___________ was not _____________ but his German was fairly acceptable, given that he spent ___
_____________________________________________
_ __ _ _ __ _ __ _ __ _ _ __ _ __ _ __ _ __ _ __ _ _ . He confirmed to his colleague that my German was “____ ____. Both looked at me with some respect after that, though the respect was not enough to save me from _________ wrath. _________ asked me where I learned to speak German, and said that he was going to interrogate me again later.

, “Wahrheit macht frei, the truth sets you free.” When I heard him say that, I knew the truth wouldn’t set me free, because “Arbeit” didn’t set the Jews free. Hitler’s propaganda machinery used to lure Jewish detainees with the slogan, “Arbeit macht frei,” Work sets you free. But work set nobody free.

took a note in his small notebook and left the room. ________ sent me back to my room and apologized___________________.

“I am sorry for keeping you awake for so long,” “No problem!” ___ replied.
After several days in isolation I was transferred to the general population, but I could only look at them because I was put in the narrow barbed-wire corridor between the cells. I felt like I was out of jail, though, and I cried and thanked God. After eight months of total isolation, I saw fellow detainees more or less in my situation. “Bad” detainees like me were shackled 24 hours a day and put in the corridor, where every passing guard or detainee stepped on them. The place was so narrow that the barbed wire kept pinching me for the next ten days. I saw _____________________ being force-fed; he was on a forty-five day hunger strike. The guards were yelling at him, and he was bouncing a dry piece of bread between his hands. All the detainees looked so worn out, as if they had been buried and after several days resurrected, but ___________________ was a completely different story: he was bones without meat. It reminded me of the pictures you see in documentaries about WWII prisoners.

Detainees were not allowed to talk to each other, but we enjoyed looking at each other. The punishment for talking was hanging the detainee by the hands with his feet barely touching the ground. I saw an Afghani detainee who passed out a couple of times while hanging from his hands. The medics “fixed” him and hung him back up. Other detainees were luckier: they were hung for a certain time and then released. Most of the detainees tried to talk while they were hanging, which made the guards double their punishment. There was a very old Afghani fellow who reportedly was arrested to turn over his son. The guy was mentally sick; he couldn’t stop talking because he didn’t know where he was, nor why. I don’t think he understood his environment, but the guards kept dutifully hanging him. It was so pitiful. One day one of the guards threw him on his face, and he was crying like a baby.

We were put in about six or seven big barbed-wire cells named after operations performed against the U.S: Nairobi, U.S.S. Cole, Dar-Es-Salaam, and so on. In each cell there was a detainee called English, who benevolently served as an interpreter to translate the orders to his co-detainees. Our English was a gentleman from Sudan named __________________. His English was very basic, and so he asked me secretly whether I spoke English. “No,” I replied — but as it turned out I was a Shakespeare compared to him. My brethren thought that I was denying them my services, but I just didn’t know how bad the situation was.

Now I was sitting in front of bunch of dead regular U.S. citizens. My first impression, when I saw them chewing without a break, was, What’s wrong with these guys, do they have to eat so much? Most of the guards were tall, and overweight. Some of them were friendly and some very hostile. Whenever I realized that a guard was mean I pretended that I understood no English. I remember one cowboy coming to me with an ugly frown on his face:

“You speak English? ” he asked. “No English,” I replied.

“We don’t like you to speak English. We want you to die slowly,” he said.

“No English,” I kept replying. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction that his message arrived. People with hatred always have something to get off their chests, but I wasn’t ready to be that drain.

Prayer in groups wasn’t allowed. Everybody prayed on his own, and so did I. Detainees had no clues about prayer time. We would just imitate: when a detainee started to pray, we assumed it was time and followed. The Koran was available to detainees who asked for one. I don’t remember asking myself, because the handling by the guards was just disrespectful; they threw it to each other like a water bottle when they passed the holy book through. I didn’t want to be a reason for humiliating God’s word. Moreover, thank God, I know the Koran by heart. As far as I recall, one of the detainees secretly passed me a copy that nobody was using in the cell.

After a couple of days, _____________________ pulled me to interrogate me. ___________ acted as an interpreter.

“Tell me your story,” _________ asked.

“My name is, I graduated in 1988, I got a scholarship to Germany...” I replied in very boring detail, none of which seemed to interest or impress _________. He grew tired and started to yawn. I knew exactly what he wanted to hear, but I couldn’t help him.

He interrupted me. “My country highly values the truth.

Now I’m gonna ask you some questions, and if you answer truthfully, you’re gonna be released and sent safely to your family. But if you fail, you’re gonna be imprisoned indefinitely. A small note in my agenda book is enough to destroy your life. What terrorist organizations are you part of ?”

“None,” I replied.

“You’re not a man, and you don’t deserve respect. Kneel, cross your hands, and put them behind your neck.”

I obeyed the rules and he put a bag over my head. My back was hurting bad lately and that position was so painful; _________ was working on my sciatic problem. _________ brought two projectors and adjusted them on my face. I couldn’t see, but the heat overwhelmed me and I started to sweat.

“You’re gonna be sent to a U.S. facility, where you’ll spend the rest of your life,” he threatened. “You’ll never see your family again. Your family will be f **cked by another man. In American jails, terrorists like you get raped by multiple men at the same time. The guards in my country do their job very well, but being raped is inevitable. But if you tell me the truth, you’re gonna be released immediately.”

I was old enough to know that he was a rotten liar and a man with no honor, but he was in charge, so I had to listen to his bullshit again and again. I just wished that the agencies would start to hire smart people. Did he really think that anybody would believe his nonsense? Somebody would have to be stupid: was he stupid, or did he think I was stupid? I would have respected him more had he told me, “Look, if you don’t tell me what I want to hear, I’m gonna torture you.”

Anyway, I said, “Of course I will be truthful!” “What terrorist organizations are you part of ?”

“None!” I replied. He put back the bag on my head and started a long discourse of humiliation, cursing, lies, and threats. I don’t really remember it all, nor am I ready to sift in my memory for such bullshit. I was so tired and hurt, and tried to sit but he forced me back. I cried from the pain. Yes, a man my age cried silently. I just couldn’t bear the agony.

after a couple of hours sent me back to my cell, promising me more torture. “This was only the start,” as he put it. I was returned to my cell, terrorized and worn out. I prayed to Allah to save me from him. I lived the days to follow in horror: whenever _________ went past our cell I looked away, avoiding seeing him so he wouldn’t “see” me, exactly like an ostrich. _________ was checking on everybody, day and night, and giving the guards the recipe for every detainee. I saw him torturing this other detainee. I don’t want to recount what I heard about him; I just want to tell what I saw with my eyes. It was an Afghani teenager, I would say 16 or 17. _________ made him stand for about three days, sleepless. I felt so bad for him. Whenever he fell down the guards came to him, shouting “no sleep for terrorists,” and made him stand again. I remember sleeping and waking up, and he stood there like a tree.

Whenever I saw _________ around, my heart started to pound, and he was often around. One day he sent a ________________ interpreter to me to pass me a message. “_________ is gonna kick your ass.”

I didn’t respond, but inside me I said, May Allah stop you! But in fact _________ didn’t kick my rear end; instead ___________ pulled me for interrogation. He was a nice guy; maybe he felt he could relate to me because of the language. And why not? Even some of the guards used to come to me and practice their German when they learned that I spoke it.

Anyway, he recounted a long story to me. “I’m not like _________. He’s young and hot-tempered. I don’t use inhumane methods; I have my own methods. I want to tell something about American history, and the whole war against terrorism.”

was straightforward and enlightening. He started with American history and the Puritans, who punished even the innocents by drowning them, and ended with the war against terrorism. “There is no innocent detainee in this campaign: either you cooperate with us and I am going to get you the best deal, or we are going to send you to Cuba.”

“Yes, but we have an American territory in Guantánamo,” he said, and told me about Teddy Roosevelt and things like that. I knew that I was going to be sent further from home, which I hated.

“Why would you send me to Cuba?”

“We have other options, like Egypt and Algeria, but we only send them the very bad people. I hate sending people over there, because they’ll experience painful torture.”

“Just send me to Egypt.”

“You sure do not want that. In Cuba they treat detainees humanely, and they have two Imams. The camp is run by the DOJ, not the military.”

“But I’ve done no crimes against your country.”

“I’m sorry if you haven’t. Just think of it as if you had cancer!”

“Am I going to be sent to court?”

“Not in the near future. Maybe in three years or so, when my people forget about September 11.” _________ went on to tell me about his private life, but I don’t want to put it down here.

I had a couple more sessions with _________ after that. He asked me some questions and tried to trick me, saying things like, “He said he knows you!” for people I had never heard of. He took my email addresses and passwords. He also asked the ___________________ who were present in Bagram to interrogate me, but they refused, saying the ________ law forbids them from interrogating aliens outside the country. He was trying the whole time to convince me to cooperate so he could save me from the trip to Cuba. To be honest, I preferred to go to Cuba than to stay in Bagram.

“Let it be,” I told him. “I don’t think I can change anything.” Somehow I liked _________. Don’t get me wrong, he was a sneaky interrogator, but at least he spoke to me according to the level of my intellect. I asked _________ to put me inside the cell with the rest of the population, and showed him the injuries I had suffered from the barbed wire. _________ approved: in Bagram, interrogators could do anything with you; they had overall control, and the MPs were at their service. Sometimes _________ gave me a drink, which I appreciated, especially with the kind of diet I received, cold MREs and dry bread in every meal. I secretly passed my meals to other detainees.

One night _________ introduced two military interrogators who asked me about the Millennium plot. They spoke broken Arabic and were very hostile to me; they didn’t allow me to sit and threatened me with all kind of things. But _________ hated them, and told me in _______, “If you want to cooperate, do so with me. These MI guys are nothing.” I felt myself under auction to whichever agency bids more!

In the population we always broke the rules and spoke to our neighbors. I had three direct neighbors. One was an Afghani teenager who was kidnapped on his way to Emirates; he used to work there, which was why he spoke Arabic with a Gulf accent. He was very funny, and he made me laugh; over the past nine months I had almost forgotten how. He was spending holidays with his family in Afghanistan and went to Iran; from there he headed to the Emirates in a boat, but the boat was hijacked by the U.S. and the passengers were arrested.

My second neighbor was twenty-year-old Mauritanian guy who was born in Nigeria and moved to Saudi Arabia. He’d never been in Mauritania, nor did he speak the Mauritanian dialect; if he didn’t introduce himself, you would say he was a Saudi.

My third neighbor was a Palestinian from Jordan named __________. He was captured and tortured by an Afghani tribal leader for about seven months. His kidnapper wanted money from __________ family or else he would turn him over to the Americans, though the latter option was the least promising because the U.S. was only paying $5,000 per head, unless it was a big head. The bandit arranged everything with_______ family regarding the ransom, but managed to flee from captivity in Kabul. He made it to Jalalabad, where he easily stuck out as an Arab mujahid and was captured and sold to the Americans. I told ____________ that I’d been in Jordan, and he seemed to be knowledgeable about their intelligence services. He knew all the interrogators who dealt with me, as ____________ himself spent 50 days in the same prison where I had been.

When we spoke, we covered our heads so guards thought we were asleep, and talked until we got tired. My neighbors told me that we were in Bagram, in Afghanistan, and I informed them that we were going to be transferred to Cuba. But they didn’t believe me.

]]>
Wed, 21 Jan 2015 18:00:00 -0500A Coup in Yemen? Jeremy Scahill & Iona Craig on Rebel Offensive to Seize Power, Saudi Role & AQAPhttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/1/20/a_coup_in_yemen_jeremy_scahill
tag:democracynow.org,2015-01-20:en/story/aecd9b AARON MATÉ: We begin in Yemen, where the capital Sana&#8217;a is seeing its worst violence in months. Intense clashes between government forces and Shia Houthi rebels have sowed chaos and raised fears of a coup. The latest round of fighting broke out this weekend when the Houthis kidnapped the chief of staff to President Abdu Hadi. The Houthis are protesting the text of a new draft constitution that would divide Yemen into six federal regions. Talks for the charter began under a peace deal reached in September after Houthis mobilized large protests and captured most of Sana&#8217;a by force. They were supposed to withdraw in the months since, but have only expanded their hold.
Now the country faces political collapse. On Monday, new gun battles erupted as Houthi fighters surrounded the prime minister&#8217;s residence and the presidential palace. The attack came despite a second ceasefire between the two sides. The capital appears calm for now, but tensions are high.
AMY GOODMAN : The Houthis&#8217; rise has further upended Yemen&#8217;s fragile political order. As the government fights the Houthis, it also wages a U.S.-backed offensive against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP . Despite the long-running U.S. drone war, the al-Qaeda insurgency has only grown deadlier each year. The Houthis themselves have also fought al-Qaeda at the same time as they now take on the Yemeni government. The Houthis appear to have major backing from longtime President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the ousted leader who was ousted in a popular uprising in 2011. The latest unrest also comes days after al-Qaeda in Yemen took responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris.
For more, we&#8217;re joined by two guests. Iona Craig is with us, a journalist who was based in Sana&#8217;a for four years as the Yemen correspondent for The Times of London. She was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2014. The government has cracked down on local and foreign journalists, and at one point last year Iona Craig was the country&#8217;s last accredited foreign reporter. She&#8217;s joining us now, though, from London.
And we&#8217;re joined by Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of the TheIntercept.org . Just days after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, Jeremy broke the story that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula had taken credit. He cited a confidential al-Qaeda source in Yemen. Days later, AQAP put out an official statement confirming it took responsibility.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Iona Craig, let&#8217;s begin with you. Just tell us what is happening right now in Yemen and who the Houthi militants are.
IONA CRAIG : What&#8217;s happening now is it&#8217;s really political posturing on behalf of the Houthis. They&#8217;re trying to get leverage to get this draft constitution changed, which they don&#8217;t agree with. So they&#8217;ve kidnapped the presidential aide, the chief of staff, in order to get that leverage. And then the fighting that we saw in the last 24 hours was also part of that. So the negotiations at the moment are going on for the release of Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak, the chief of staff, in exchange for changing the draft constitution.
But the issue with the Houthis, the Houthis were first formed as a movement in 2004. They then fought the government in six wars between 2004 and 2010. But they then became part of the Arab Spring. They put down their weapons. They joined the protests. They joined the sit-ins, particularly in Sana&#8217;a, and became part of that peaceful movement. But the transition that followed that was backed by the international community—and actually instigated by the U.S. in the first place—did not go their way. So when the national dialogue was concluded in January last year and the decision was made about federalism and to divide the country into six regions, the Houthis weren&#8217;t happy about that. And that was when they started taking territory. So they were pushing from their stronghold, if you like, in Sa&#8217;dah up in the north, which is up by the Saudi border, and they started pushing south toward Sana&#8217;a.
This was also then an opportunity for Ali Abdullah Saleh to join in, because the Houthis&#8217; main enemy is Islah, which is Yemen&#8217;s equivalent to the Muslim Brotherhood, who had gained a lot of power after the Arab Spring and a lot of political power. So they had a joint enemy. So, between the support of Ali Abdullah Saleh and the Houthis, they were able to take that ground, they were able to beat the Islahi-supported tribes, and eventually got to Sana&#8217;a in September. And in the space of four days of fighting, the minister of interior then ordered the troops to stand down, and they took control of the city.
AARON MATÉ: When you say the Houthis are engaging in political posturing, do you mean then that they&#8217;re not trying to carry out a coup, despite all this fighting in the capital?
IONA CRAIG : I think it&#8217;s really hard to determine whether that&#8217;s the case or not. In September, they had the opportunity to do that. They could have kicked President Hadi out at that point, but they didn&#8217;t, which makes me think that they probably won&#8217;t do that now. It depends how far they&#8217;re pushed. If they don&#8217;t get their way with the constitution, then they may indeed do that. But I think the Houthis have so far stopped short of actually taking physical power. Again, they could have put their own people up as ministers when the new government was formed at the end of last year, but they chose not to do so, because it means that then they are not held responsible for when the government collapses and things go wrong, where they&#8217;re taking this silent control by trying to manipulate the government, take control inside ministries, without actually having their own men in power.
AMY GOODMAN : Jeremy Scahill, how does what&#8217;s going on in Yemen right now, a place you also have spent time in and reported from, relate to what happened in France and AQAP , al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, taking responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo attack?
JEREMY SCAHILL : Well, you know, one of the things that&#8217;s interesting, just to add to what—you know, to Iona&#8217;s analysis, which I think is really spot-on, is that the Houthis have been a really interesting political football of sorts in the U.S. policy in Yemen. They have also been bombed repeatedly by the Saudis, you know, Saudi Arabia waging a not-so-secret war, bombing the Houthis. In the WikiLeaks cables, you see that when Ali Abdullah Saleh was in charge, officially in power in Yemen, he would consistently say to the United States, &quot;We have to do something about the Houthis, because they&#8217;re being backed by Iran.&quot; And actually, to the credit of U.S. diplomats, they said, &quot;Well, you know, we don&#8217;t exactly think that that&#8217;s true.&quot; And what was happening is that Ali Abdullah Saleh was a master manipulator of the United States, and he was looking for any way he could to justify getting more military assistance, more money to bolster his own forces that were supposedly fighting al-Qaeda, to actually use them to shore up his own power base. So, when the well was sort of dry, started to dry up with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula at points, he would then sort of appeal to the United States and say, &quot;Hey, we have these Iranian agents in the form of the Houthis inside of Yemen.&quot; And so, what we&#8217;re seeing right now is that Ali Abdullah Saleh, who actually himself is a Zaydi Shiite and has roots in that region, has now flipped sides and, as Iona said, is sort of the not-so-hidden hand behind some of the power grab efforts of the Houthis.
As it relates to the Charlie Hebdo massacre, of course, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is facing a situation in the world where they and al-Qaeda Central have sort of been eclipsed by the rise of the Islamic State, ISIS . And so, in this case, it seems like, at a minimum, there are ties between the Kouachi brothers, who conducted the massacre, and AQAP . It&#8217;s to AQAP&#8217;s benefit to maximize the way that that group portrays its involvement with Charlie Hebdo . But there are still very serious questions about whether or not, as AQAP says, they financed it and directed it, or that they simply provided some training to aspiring jihadists who went on then to conduct this very, very public, globally recognized massacre.
AARON MATÉ: Iona, Jeremy mentioned Saudi Arabia. That&#8217;s Yemen&#8217;s neighbor to the north. Can you expand more on their role in this current conflict? And also, do you agree that Saleh, the former leader, is playing a major role in the current unrest?
IONA CRAIG : Yes, I think it&#8217;s certainly clear that Saleh has played some role. It was clear to me, after the Houthis had taken over control of Sana&#8217;a in September, just walking around the city, talking to people, even talking to some of the men that were Houthis and other people around the city, that many of those plainclothes gunmen that you were seeing on the street, as Houthis, had actually been part of the Republican Guard before, which the Republican Guard was a unit under Ali Abdullah Saleh&#8217;s time and was commanded by his son, Ahmed Ali, so there was very much an overlap between the Houthis and what used to be the Republican Guard in the takeover of Sana&#8217;a in September and indeed in the continued control of the city since then.
Just to go back to the issue of the Saudis, the Saudis are sort of stuck in a situation now where, you know, obviously the Houthis are seen as very much as supported by Iran—how much support there is isn&#8217;t clear, but those are obviously their regional rivals. The Saudis, as Jeremy mentioned, were very much involved in bombing the Houthis. And we actually know from more recent reporting that there were cluster bombs that were fired on the Houthis during those wars, that came from America, that were sold to them by America to the Saudis. So, this slogan the Houthis have of &quot;death to America&quot; not only comes from a dislike of American foreign policy, but issues over that, where the Houthis have claimed that it&#8217;s American bombs that were hitting them in the past. But Saudi Arabia is now in the situation where the Houthis are effectively in charge of the government, although not physically, as I mentioned before, as Hadi is still there. So they&#8217;re reluctant to give any more economic aid to Yemen as a result, because the Houthis are in control, and they very much see them as supported by Iran. So that brings Yemen closer to the edge of economic collapse, which it&#8217;s now facing at the moment.
On the other side, you have who is taking on the Houthis, if the Saudis are looking at it from that perspective. And the only people who are physically and able—willing and able to take on the Houthis at the moment is al-Qaeda, which is also putting a lot of tribal groups in a difficult position. When the Houthis started taking further territory after Sana&#8217;a in September, there were areas where tribes didn&#8217;t want the Houthis coming into their territory, and they then found themselves, whether they liked it or not, on the same side as al-Qaeda, and possibly with the prospect of fighting alongside al-Qaeda, even if they didn&#8217;t agree with them ideologically, because they were the only ones that were standing up to the Houthis&#8217; expansion, because the government was neither willing or able to do so.
AMY GOODMAN : Iona Craig, I wanted to ask you about the comments of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. He&#8217;s in London right now, and he was repeating the allegations that have repeatedly been uttered on Fox—now, though, four major apologies from Fox about what they&#8217;ve been saying—that whole areas of London—of, rather, Britain, are no-go zones. Being that you are in London right now, having reported in Yemen for years, can you talk about this controversy and the response of David Cameron and others in Britain? They also made the—Fox also made the allegations about France.
IONA CRAIG : I think, really, people here obviously feel incredibly insulted by that kind of very ignorant comment, or, you know, some people have just laughed it off as slightly ridiculous, as many people see those kind of comments. But yeah, I mean, I&#8217;ve spent time in Birmingham. I&#8217;m living at the moment in South London. You know, these are communities, multicultural communities, in both cities that are—that are certainly no-go areas for anybody in that respect. So, yes, I think it&#8217;s deeply insulting to the people of Birmingham particularly. And, you know, if—
AMY GOODMAN : Birmingham is the place—
IONA CRAIG : —that&#8217;s how we can—
AMY GOODMAN : Birmingham is the place where the so-called terrorism expert Steve Emerson said on Fox is completely Muslim. It&#8217;s majority Christian, actually. And then he was forced to apologize, Iona.
IONA CRAIG : Yeah, I think probably the crucial thing is that &quot;so-called terrorism expert.&quot; You know, perhaps this is somebody who hasn&#8217;t spent much time from behind a—out from behind a desk for a while. Certainly, obviously, hasn&#8217;t visited Birmingham anyway.
AARON MATÉ: Well, Iona, back to Yemen, what do you see happening next?
IONA CRAIG : I think it&#8217;s really hard to predict right now. I think that the situation politically, obviously—you know, unless you have political stability, you can&#8217;t have security. You&#8217;ve got a very weak government. You&#8217;ve got a very weak president. You&#8217;ve effectively got a president now with a gun to his head from the Houthis, who are saying, &quot;We want the draft constitution changed; otherwise, we&#8217;re going to keep control and hold onto the chief of staff.&quot;
You&#8217;ve got al-Qaeda, who have really changed their mode of operation since the Houthis took over in September, and have started targeting civilians as a result, civilians that they claim are Houthis. But before, al-Qaeda had never deliberately and gone out of their way to kill civilians in Yemen, and that changed after the Houthis took control in September. So they attacked a Houthi gathering in October with a suicide bomber. I was actually walking into the square when that suicide bomb went off in October. And twice since the beginning of this year, they have attacked civilians, and deliberately targeting civilians. So that&#8217;s really worrying for people in Yemen, obviously, that now civilians are seen as a legitimate target by al-Qaeda. They&#8217;ve claimed responsibility for over 150 attacks across Yemen since the Houthis took control.
So, you have this issue of instability both politically and security-wise, and the economy, as I already mentioned, on the brink of collapse, where the government has run out of money to even pay the civil service and the military. So, at the moment, really, it&#8217;s all in the hands of the Houthis. It&#8217;s up to them whether they start this fighting again in order to push what—and force the government into a corner and to take heed of their demands, or whether we now see a peaceful end to all of this. But it won&#8217;t really be an end. The Houthis still have the power in their hands at the moment, and President Hadi most certainly does not.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, Iona, we want to thank you for being with us. Iona Craig, joining us from London, she was based in Sana&#8217;a for four years as the Yemen correspondent for The Times of London, was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2014, left Yemen last month, joining us from London.
When we come back from break, we&#8217;ll be continuing with Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of The Intercept , about the so-called terrorism experts and the networks they&#8217;re on. We&#8217;ll play a clip of Jeremy taking on CNN on CNN . And also, what does it mean to protect sources, no matter who or where they are? Stay with us. AARON MATÉ: We begin in Yemen, where the capital Sana’a is seeing its worst violence in months. Intense clashes between government forces and Shia Houthi rebels have sowed chaos and raised fears of a coup. The latest round of fighting broke out this weekend when the Houthis kidnapped the chief of staff to President Abdu Hadi. The Houthis are protesting the text of a new draft constitution that would divide Yemen into six federal regions. Talks for the charter began under a peace deal reached in September after Houthis mobilized large protests and captured most of Sana’a by force. They were supposed to withdraw in the months since, but have only expanded their hold.

Now the country faces political collapse. On Monday, new gun battles erupted as Houthi fighters surrounded the prime minister’s residence and the presidential palace. The attack came despite a second ceasefire between the two sides. The capital appears calm for now, but tensions are high.

AMYGOODMAN: The Houthis’ rise has further upended Yemen’s fragile political order. As the government fights the Houthis, it also wages a U.S.-backed offensive against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP. Despite the long-running U.S. drone war, the al-Qaeda insurgency has only grown deadlier each year. The Houthis themselves have also fought al-Qaeda at the same time as they now take on the Yemeni government. The Houthis appear to have major backing from longtime President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the ousted leader who was ousted in a popular uprising in 2011. The latest unrest also comes days after al-Qaeda in Yemen took responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris.

For more, we’re joined by two guests. Iona Craig is with us, a journalist who was based in Sana’a for four years as the Yemen correspondent for The Times of London. She was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2014. The government has cracked down on local and foreign journalists, and at one point last year Iona Craig was the country’s last accredited foreign reporter. She’s joining us now, though, from London.

And we’re joined by Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of the TheIntercept.org. Just days after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, Jeremy broke the story that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula had taken credit. He cited a confidential al-Qaeda source in Yemen. Days later, AQAP put out an official statement confirming it took responsibility.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Iona Craig, let’s begin with you. Just tell us what is happening right now in Yemen and who the Houthi militants are.

IONACRAIG: What’s happening now is it’s really political posturing on behalf of the Houthis. They’re trying to get leverage to get this draft constitution changed, which they don’t agree with. So they’ve kidnapped the presidential aide, the chief of staff, in order to get that leverage. And then the fighting that we saw in the last 24 hours was also part of that. So the negotiations at the moment are going on for the release of Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak, the chief of staff, in exchange for changing the draft constitution.

But the issue with the Houthis, the Houthis were first formed as a movement in 2004. They then fought the government in six wars between 2004 and 2010. But they then became part of the Arab Spring. They put down their weapons. They joined the protests. They joined the sit-ins, particularly in Sana’a, and became part of that peaceful movement. But the transition that followed that was backed by the international community—and actually instigated by the U.S. in the first place—did not go their way. So when the national dialogue was concluded in January last year and the decision was made about federalism and to divide the country into six regions, the Houthis weren’t happy about that. And that was when they started taking territory. So they were pushing from their stronghold, if you like, in Sa’dah up in the north, which is up by the Saudi border, and they started pushing south toward Sana’a.

This was also then an opportunity for Ali Abdullah Saleh to join in, because the Houthis’ main enemy is Islah, which is Yemen’s equivalent to the Muslim Brotherhood, who had gained a lot of power after the Arab Spring and a lot of political power. So they had a joint enemy. So, between the support of Ali Abdullah Saleh and the Houthis, they were able to take that ground, they were able to beat the Islahi-supported tribes, and eventually got to Sana’a in September. And in the space of four days of fighting, the minister of interior then ordered the troops to stand down, and they took control of the city.

AARON MATÉ: When you say the Houthis are engaging in political posturing, do you mean then that they’re not trying to carry out a coup, despite all this fighting in the capital?

IONACRAIG: I think it’s really hard to determine whether that’s the case or not. In September, they had the opportunity to do that. They could have kicked President Hadi out at that point, but they didn’t, which makes me think that they probably won’t do that now. It depends how far they’re pushed. If they don’t get their way with the constitution, then they may indeed do that. But I think the Houthis have so far stopped short of actually taking physical power. Again, they could have put their own people up as ministers when the new government was formed at the end of last year, but they chose not to do so, because it means that then they are not held responsible for when the government collapses and things go wrong, where they’re taking this silent control by trying to manipulate the government, take control inside ministries, without actually having their own men in power.

AMYGOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill, how does what’s going on in Yemen right now, a place you also have spent time in and reported from, relate to what happened in France and AQAP, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, taking responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo attack?

JEREMYSCAHILL: Well, you know, one of the things that’s interesting, just to add to what—you know, to Iona’s analysis, which I think is really spot-on, is that the Houthis have been a really interesting political football of sorts in the U.S. policy in Yemen. They have also been bombed repeatedly by the Saudis, you know, Saudi Arabia waging a not-so-secret war, bombing the Houthis. In the WikiLeaks cables, you see that when Ali Abdullah Saleh was in charge, officially in power in Yemen, he would consistently say to the United States, "We have to do something about the Houthis, because they’re being backed by Iran." And actually, to the credit of U.S. diplomats, they said, "Well, you know, we don’t exactly think that that’s true." And what was happening is that Ali Abdullah Saleh was a master manipulator of the United States, and he was looking for any way he could to justify getting more military assistance, more money to bolster his own forces that were supposedly fighting al-Qaeda, to actually use them to shore up his own power base. So, when the well was sort of dry, started to dry up with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula at points, he would then sort of appeal to the United States and say, "Hey, we have these Iranian agents in the form of the Houthis inside of Yemen." And so, what we’re seeing right now is that Ali Abdullah Saleh, who actually himself is a Zaydi Shiite and has roots in that region, has now flipped sides and, as Iona said, is sort of the not-so-hidden hand behind some of the power grab efforts of the Houthis.

As it relates to the Charlie Hebdo massacre, of course, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is facing a situation in the world where they and al-Qaeda Central have sort of been eclipsed by the rise of the Islamic State, ISIS. And so, in this case, it seems like, at a minimum, there are ties between the Kouachi brothers, who conducted the massacre, and AQAP. It’s to AQAP’s benefit to maximize the way that that group portrays its involvement with Charlie Hebdo. But there are still very serious questions about whether or not, as AQAP says, they financed it and directed it, or that they simply provided some training to aspiring jihadists who went on then to conduct this very, very public, globally recognized massacre.

AARON MATÉ: Iona, Jeremy mentioned Saudi Arabia. That’s Yemen’s neighbor to the north. Can you expand more on their role in this current conflict? And also, do you agree that Saleh, the former leader, is playing a major role in the current unrest?

IONACRAIG: Yes, I think it’s certainly clear that Saleh has played some role. It was clear to me, after the Houthis had taken over control of Sana’a in September, just walking around the city, talking to people, even talking to some of the men that were Houthis and other people around the city, that many of those plainclothes gunmen that you were seeing on the street, as Houthis, had actually been part of the Republican Guard before, which the Republican Guard was a unit under Ali Abdullah Saleh’s time and was commanded by his son, Ahmed Ali, so there was very much an overlap between the Houthis and what used to be the Republican Guard in the takeover of Sana’a in September and indeed in the continued control of the city since then.

Just to go back to the issue of the Saudis, the Saudis are sort of stuck in a situation now where, you know, obviously the Houthis are seen as very much as supported by Iran—how much support there is isn’t clear, but those are obviously their regional rivals. The Saudis, as Jeremy mentioned, were very much involved in bombing the Houthis. And we actually know from more recent reporting that there were cluster bombs that were fired on the Houthis during those wars, that came from America, that were sold to them by America to the Saudis. So, this slogan the Houthis have of "death to America" not only comes from a dislike of American foreign policy, but issues over that, where the Houthis have claimed that it’s American bombs that were hitting them in the past. But Saudi Arabia is now in the situation where the Houthis are effectively in charge of the government, although not physically, as I mentioned before, as Hadi is still there. So they’re reluctant to give any more economic aid to Yemen as a result, because the Houthis are in control, and they very much see them as supported by Iran. So that brings Yemen closer to the edge of economic collapse, which it’s now facing at the moment.

On the other side, you have who is taking on the Houthis, if the Saudis are looking at it from that perspective. And the only people who are physically and able—willing and able to take on the Houthis at the moment is al-Qaeda, which is also putting a lot of tribal groups in a difficult position. When the Houthis started taking further territory after Sana’a in September, there were areas where tribes didn’t want the Houthis coming into their territory, and they then found themselves, whether they liked it or not, on the same side as al-Qaeda, and possibly with the prospect of fighting alongside al-Qaeda, even if they didn’t agree with them ideologically, because they were the only ones that were standing up to the Houthis’ expansion, because the government was neither willing or able to do so.

AMYGOODMAN: Iona Craig, I wanted to ask you about the comments of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. He’s in London right now, and he was repeating the allegations that have repeatedly been uttered on Fox—now, though, four major apologies from Fox about what they’ve been saying—that whole areas of London—of, rather, Britain, are no-go zones. Being that you are in London right now, having reported in Yemen for years, can you talk about this controversy and the response of David Cameron and others in Britain? They also made the—Fox also made the allegations about France.

IONACRAIG: I think, really, people here obviously feel incredibly insulted by that kind of very ignorant comment, or, you know, some people have just laughed it off as slightly ridiculous, as many people see those kind of comments. But yeah, I mean, I’ve spent time in Birmingham. I’m living at the moment in South London. You know, these are communities, multicultural communities, in both cities that are—that are certainly no-go areas for anybody in that respect. So, yes, I think it’s deeply insulting to the people of Birmingham particularly. And, you know, if—

AMYGOODMAN: Birmingham is the place—

IONACRAIG: —that’s how we can—

AMYGOODMAN: Birmingham is the place where the so-called terrorism expert Steve Emerson said on Fox is completely Muslim. It’s majority Christian, actually. And then he was forced to apologize, Iona.

IONACRAIG: Yeah, I think probably the crucial thing is that "so-called terrorism expert." You know, perhaps this is somebody who hasn’t spent much time from behind a—out from behind a desk for a while. Certainly, obviously, hasn’t visited Birmingham anyway.

AARON MATÉ: Well, Iona, back to Yemen, what do you see happening next?

IONACRAIG: I think it’s really hard to predict right now. I think that the situation politically, obviously—you know, unless you have political stability, you can’t have security. You’ve got a very weak government. You’ve got a very weak president. You’ve effectively got a president now with a gun to his head from the Houthis, who are saying, "We want the draft constitution changed; otherwise, we’re going to keep control and hold onto the chief of staff."

You’ve got al-Qaeda, who have really changed their mode of operation since the Houthis took over in September, and have started targeting civilians as a result, civilians that they claim are Houthis. But before, al-Qaeda had never deliberately and gone out of their way to kill civilians in Yemen, and that changed after the Houthis took control in September. So they attacked a Houthi gathering in October with a suicide bomber. I was actually walking into the square when that suicide bomb went off in October. And twice since the beginning of this year, they have attacked civilians, and deliberately targeting civilians. So that’s really worrying for people in Yemen, obviously, that now civilians are seen as a legitimate target by al-Qaeda. They’ve claimed responsibility for over 150 attacks across Yemen since the Houthis took control.

So, you have this issue of instability both politically and security-wise, and the economy, as I already mentioned, on the brink of collapse, where the government has run out of money to even pay the civil service and the military. So, at the moment, really, it’s all in the hands of the Houthis. It’s up to them whether they start this fighting again in order to push what—and force the government into a corner and to take heed of their demands, or whether we now see a peaceful end to all of this. But it won’t really be an end. The Houthis still have the power in their hands at the moment, and President Hadi most certainly does not.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, Iona, we want to thank you for being with us. Iona Craig, joining us from London, she was based in Sana’a for four years as the Yemen correspondent for The Times of London, was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2014, left Yemen last month, joining us from London.

When we come back from break, we’ll be continuing with Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of The Intercept, about the so-called terrorism experts and the networks they’re on. We’ll play a clip of Jeremy taking on CNN on CNN. And also, what does it mean to protect sources, no matter who or where they are? Stay with us.

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Tue, 20 Jan 2015 00:00:00 -0500As Fox News Apologizes, Jeremy Scahill on Fake "Terror Experts" & Challenges of Real War Reportinghttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/1/20/as_fox_news_apologizes_jeremy_scahill
tag:democracynow.org,2015-01-20:en/story/44900c AMY GOODMAN : Our guest—we continue with Jeremy Scahill. He&#8217;s the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World&#8217;s Most Powerful Mercenary Army , and his latest book is called Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield . He broke the story that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP , took credit for the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, based on an al-Qaeda source in Yemen. Days later, AQAP put out a statement of that very nature, but Jeremy broke it first. Jeremy, talk about the controversy— The Washington Post has written about it, you were on CNN talking about it—protecting what they call &quot;terrorist sources,&quot; not naming the sources that leaked you that story before it was officially acknowledged.
JEREMY SCAHILL : Well, I mean, I actually, as a—you know, I&#8217;ve been a journalist for around 20 years, and I&#8217;m honestly a bit dumbfounded at the response from other journalists. I mean, a classic part of good journalism, responsible journalism, going many, many centuries back, is that you&#8217;re trying to provide people with information that is actionable, that they can use to make informed decisions on what to believe or positions to take on certain issues. And a key part of covering war is that you have to have journalists willing to go to the other side to speak with the people that you are told are the enemies and to get their perspective so that we can better understand the nature of this conflict. And so, just as I&#8217;ve gone to areas in Yemen that are controlled by al-Qaeda or areas in Somalia that are controlled by al-Shabab or areas in Afghanistan that are controlled by the Taliban, you know, we have an obligation to try to understand where al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is coming from. And so, you know, the idea we should have a special standard that in certain cases we&#8217;re actually not journalists, but we are somehow militant nationalists who should not engage in responsible journalism because the U.S. government doesn&#8217;t like us talking to those individuals, to me, just flies in the face of just basic journalistic principles.
AARON MATÉ: Well, Jeremy, the director of the FBI , James Comey, he criticized The New York Times for anonymously quoting a source from al-Qaeda. And I presume he would criticize you, too, since you broke the story, the first person to reveal that AQAP had taken credit for the Charlie Hebdo massacre. And Comey said the use of the source was &quot;mystifying and disgusting.&quot; And he added, to the Times , &quot;I fear you have lost your way and urge you to reconsider allowing your newspaper to be used by those who have murdered so many and work every day to murder more.&quot; Your response?
JEREMY SCAHILL : Yeah, well, I mean, clearly, Director Comey doesn&#8217;t actually want us to have a truly free press. And let&#8217;s remember that this Justice Department is waging a war against whistleblowers that effectively amounts to a war against journalism. Look, I don&#8217;t believe, you know, in using anonymous sources widely, and I particularly think that newspapers and news organizations should not be giving senior U.S. officials anonymity so that they can project their propaganda on the world, which is largely why senior U.S. officials request anonymity. They want to be able to say things that secretly or privately benefit U.S. policy, and it&#8217;s not actually moving the story forward. A lot of disinformation gets pushed out that way. So I believe in a limited use of confidential sources.
In this case, we had a situation where we had something that was of tremendous news value on a breaking news story. The gunmen had declared that they were from al-Qaeda in Yemen. There was a lot of speculation going on. And so, I reached out to sources that I know are members of AQAP with access to the leadership of that organization to try to get an understanding of whether or not this was true. And it was not clear at the time that any official statement was forthcoming from AQAP . And if we were to identify our source, who is not authorized to speak, not just because they&#8217;re like a private spokesperson, but because AQAP has a very strict set of guidelines as to who speaks officially for the organization—also the source could potentially be in danger, which, to me, is the number one reason why you would grant anonymity to a confidential source whose information in the past has been verified as legitimate, if they&#8217;re life is going to be in danger.
So, I didn&#8217;t just decide this on my own to grant anonymity to someone from AQAP . Our general counsel at The Intercept reviewed this, our editor-in-chief, Betsy Reed, and two senior editors. We all discussed this issue and ultimately made a determination that granting anonymity in this case was a responsible thing to do.
AMY GOODMAN : On Sunday, Jeremy, you appeared on CNN&#8217;s Reliable Sources , which is hosted by Brian Stelter.
JEREMY SCAHILL : Where I think it gets into really kind of fear-generating territory is when you have these so-called terror analysts on the air, many of whom also work for risk consultancy firms that benefit from the idea of making us afraid. I don&#8217;t think that CNN , MSNBC and Fox News do anywhere near a good enough job at revealing the potential conflicts of interest of some of the on-air analysts who also work in the private sector and make money off of the idea that we should be very afraid.
BRIAN STELTER : But you understand that is a pretty incendiary charge, that these people want us to be frightened inappropriately, for unnecessary reasons.
JEREMY SCAHILL : Well, I mean, look, I&#8217;ve spent a lot of years investigating how the war contracting industry works. You&#8217;ll have these retired generals come on CNN , MSNBC , Fox, and they&#8217;ll talk about the danger of a terror group in a particular country. And they&#8217;re on the board of a huge weapons manufacturer or a defense company that is going to benefit from an extension of that war, an expansion of that war. Perhaps the biggest violator of this is General Barry McCaffrey, who has made a tremendous amount of money off of war contracting, and then he&#8217;s brought onto these networks.
AMY GOODMAN : That is Jeremy Scahill on CNN&#8217;s Reliable Sources , hosted by Brain Stelter. Jeremy, if you could take it by there. You were talking about General McCaffrey and others.
JEREMY SCAHILL : Right. I mean, look, we also know that soon after 9/11, the Pentagon expanded its use of a program where they would invite in former U.S. military brass who were serving as pundits on cable news, and they would basically give them talking points that amounted to propaganda, a backdoor way of the war machine being able to spread its message. And then these guys, without disclosing that they were part of these secret meetings, would go on cable networks and project, supposedly as independent analysts, the very policies that Rumsfeld and others at the Pentagon were trying to drive through to the American public. Almost all of these guys who are retired generals and retired brass that appear on these networks have their hand in the war industry to one degree or another. Many of them are making money off of working with risk consultancy firms, where they are going to big multinational corporations and offering them their services analyzing risk in countries around the world. If you remember Paul Bremer, who was put in charge of the occupation of Iraq, what he was doing prior to 9/11 was benefiting off of the notion that companies need to be afraid all around the world and that they need people like him to help them assess their risk and mitigate any kind of potential terrorist actions against these corporations. So, on the one hand, it&#8217;s the retired generals and other brass that are working in the war industry.
On the other hand, it&#8217;s people like Evan Kohlmann from Flashpoint Partners, who is on MSNBC , who is a total fraud and is constantly brought on as an expert. His so-called expert testimony has been used to put countless people away in prison on very dubious, thin terrorism charges. You have Samuel Laurent, who was on CNN for a couple of days—he&#8217;s been missing in action. We don&#8217;t know where he is. He doesn&#8217;t seem to be on CNN anymore. But Samuel Laurent, who is a French so-called terror expert, is widely viewed in France as a fraud, and people were up in arms when CNN put him on the air as a terrorism expert.
So, you know, part of what I think is the problem here is it&#8217;s—you know, CNN has actually really great international reporters, who have great experience on the ground. I have tremendous respect for many journalists, particularly in the international section, of CNN . But then they bring on these analysts who have a vested interest in revving up the fear engine, and they don&#8217;t disclose, in many cases, the built-in agenda of particularly some of these retired military people.
AARON MATÉ: Jeremy, as we wrap, I just want to ask you again about the story you broke about al-Qaeda in Yemen taking responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo massacre. What do you see is going on there with them coming forward to say that they financed the brothers, trained them? Because that would presumably invite an intensified U.S. drone war. And what questions or concerns do you have, going forward, in the aftermath of them taking credit?
JEREMY SCAHILL : Well, I mean, you know, this may be somewhat of a cynical read on this, but who really has benefited—the people that really have benefited most from the U.S. drone war in Yemen have not been ordinary Yemenis, have not been the people of the United States. The only real beneficiaries of that policy have been the manufacturers of drones and the missiles fired from the drones, and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, because when the U.S. conducts a drone strike and they kill innocent civilians, AQAP can use that for propaganda purposes. In the limited cases where they actually have killed individuals from AQAP , then they&#8217;re celebrated as martyrs. So I think that part of what AQAP is doing is trying to goad the United States into once again escalating or intensifying its drone campaign inside of Yemen, because it elevates the stature of AQAP . Now, it could be that AQAP had limited involvement and that all of the facts about it are already on the table. My sense is that if AQAP did indeed direct this plot, that they&#8217;re going to produce photographic or video evidence to back that up. If they don&#8217;t do that, then I think that, you know, it&#8217;s likely that the truth is that they had some involvement but were not effectively running the show.
AMY GOODMAN : And finally—we have 20 seconds—what&#8217;s repeated on so many networks, that Anwar al-Awlaki, before he was killed in a U.S. drone strike, was behind this terror attack on Charlie Hebdo ?
JEREMY SCAHILL : Well, look, I mean, they try to link Anwar al-Awlaki to every plot under the sun. The fact is that Anwar al-Awlaki&#8217;s writings and speeches clearly have inspired so-called lone-wolf terrorists. No doubt about that. Whether he was operationally in charge of this is actually kind of a joke. Anwar al-Awlaki was not even mid-level management in AQAP . They&#8217;re exploiting his legacy because of the power of nightmares. He speaks in English. He aims his message at a Western, English-speaking audience. So the United States has elevated his status within the organization. AQAP has a leadership structure. Anwar al-Awlaki was not a senior figure within AQAP .
AMY GOODMAN : Jeremy Scahill, we want to thank you for being with us, co-founder of The Intercept , broke the story that AQAP took credit for the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, based on an al-Qaeda source in Yemen. Days later, AQAP put out an official statement confirming it took responsibility. Jeremy&#8217;s latest book, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield ; his Oscar-nominated film, Dirty Wars , as well. He is an award-winning journalist.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we go to Guatemala for a remarkable verdict that has just come down around crimes against humanity. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN : Charlie Haden and the Liberation Music Orchestra, &quot;Spiritual,&quot; a song inspired by Medgar Evers, Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. And to see other choice picks of music inspired by or inspiring Dr. King, you can go to democracynow.org . A big shout out to Ruth Haden, who is the widow of Charlie Haden, who has joined us today at our studios just to come by and say hi. This is Democracy Now! I&#8217;m Amy Goodman, with Aaron Maté. AMYGOODMAN: Our guest—we continue with Jeremy Scahill. He’s the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, and his latest book is called Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield. He broke the story that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP, took credit for the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, based on an al-Qaeda source in Yemen. Days later, AQAP put out a statement of that very nature, but Jeremy broke it first. Jeremy, talk about the controversy—The Washington Post has written about it, you were on CNN talking about it—protecting what they call "terrorist sources," not naming the sources that leaked you that story before it was officially acknowledged.

JEREMYSCAHILL: Well, I mean, I actually, as a—you know, I’ve been a journalist for around 20 years, and I’m honestly a bit dumbfounded at the response from other journalists. I mean, a classic part of good journalism, responsible journalism, going many, many centuries back, is that you’re trying to provide people with information that is actionable, that they can use to make informed decisions on what to believe or positions to take on certain issues. And a key part of covering war is that you have to have journalists willing to go to the other side to speak with the people that you are told are the enemies and to get their perspective so that we can better understand the nature of this conflict. And so, just as I’ve gone to areas in Yemen that are controlled by al-Qaeda or areas in Somalia that are controlled by al-Shabab or areas in Afghanistan that are controlled by the Taliban, you know, we have an obligation to try to understand where al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is coming from. And so, you know, the idea we should have a special standard that in certain cases we’re actually not journalists, but we are somehow militant nationalists who should not engage in responsible journalism because the U.S. government doesn’t like us talking to those individuals, to me, just flies in the face of just basic journalistic principles.

AARON MATÉ: Well, Jeremy, the director of the FBI, James Comey, he criticized The New York Times for anonymously quoting a source from al-Qaeda. And I presume he would criticize you, too, since you broke the story, the first person to reveal that AQAP had taken credit for the Charlie Hebdo massacre. And Comey said the use of the source was "mystifying and disgusting." And he added, to the Times, "I fear you have lost your way and urge you to reconsider allowing your newspaper to be used by those who have murdered so many and work every day to murder more." Your response?

JEREMYSCAHILL: Yeah, well, I mean, clearly, Director Comey doesn’t actually want us to have a truly free press. And let’s remember that this Justice Department is waging a war against whistleblowers that effectively amounts to a war against journalism. Look, I don’t believe, you know, in using anonymous sources widely, and I particularly think that newspapers and news organizations should not be giving senior U.S. officials anonymity so that they can project their propaganda on the world, which is largely why senior U.S. officials request anonymity. They want to be able to say things that secretly or privately benefit U.S. policy, and it’s not actually moving the story forward. A lot of disinformation gets pushed out that way. So I believe in a limited use of confidential sources.

In this case, we had a situation where we had something that was of tremendous news value on a breaking news story. The gunmen had declared that they were from al-Qaeda in Yemen. There was a lot of speculation going on. And so, I reached out to sources that I know are members of AQAP with access to the leadership of that organization to try to get an understanding of whether or not this was true. And it was not clear at the time that any official statement was forthcoming from AQAP. And if we were to identify our source, who is not authorized to speak, not just because they’re like a private spokesperson, but because AQAP has a very strict set of guidelines as to who speaks officially for the organization—also the source could potentially be in danger, which, to me, is the number one reason why you would grant anonymity to a confidential source whose information in the past has been verified as legitimate, if they’re life is going to be in danger.

So, I didn’t just decide this on my own to grant anonymity to someone from AQAP. Our general counsel at The Intercept reviewed this, our editor-in-chief, Betsy Reed, and two senior editors. We all discussed this issue and ultimately made a determination that granting anonymity in this case was a responsible thing to do.

AMYGOODMAN: On Sunday, Jeremy, you appeared on CNN’s Reliable Sources, which is hosted by Brian Stelter.

JEREMYSCAHILL: Where I think it gets into really kind of fear-generating territory is when you have these so-called terror analysts on the air, many of whom also work for risk consultancy firms that benefit from the idea of making us afraid. I don’t think that CNN, MSNBC and Fox News do anywhere near a good enough job at revealing the potential conflicts of interest of some of the on-air analysts who also work in the private sector and make money off of the idea that we should be very afraid.

BRIANSTELTER: But you understand that is a pretty incendiary charge, that these people want us to be frightened inappropriately, for unnecessary reasons.

JEREMYSCAHILL: Well, I mean, look, I’ve spent a lot of years investigating how the war contracting industry works. You’ll have these retired generals come on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and they’ll talk about the danger of a terror group in a particular country. And they’re on the board of a huge weapons manufacturer or a defense company that is going to benefit from an extension of that war, an expansion of that war. Perhaps the biggest violator of this is General Barry McCaffrey, who has made a tremendous amount of money off of war contracting, and then he’s brought onto these networks.

AMYGOODMAN: That is Jeremy Scahill on CNN’s Reliable Sources, hosted by Brain Stelter. Jeremy, if you could take it by there. You were talking about General McCaffrey and others.

JEREMYSCAHILL: Right. I mean, look, we also know that soon after 9/11, the Pentagon expanded its use of a program where they would invite in former U.S. military brass who were serving as pundits on cable news, and they would basically give them talking points that amounted to propaganda, a backdoor way of the war machine being able to spread its message. And then these guys, without disclosing that they were part of these secret meetings, would go on cable networks and project, supposedly as independent analysts, the very policies that Rumsfeld and others at the Pentagon were trying to drive through to the American public. Almost all of these guys who are retired generals and retired brass that appear on these networks have their hand in the war industry to one degree or another. Many of them are making money off of working with risk consultancy firms, where they are going to big multinational corporations and offering them their services analyzing risk in countries around the world. If you remember Paul Bremer, who was put in charge of the occupation of Iraq, what he was doing prior to 9/11 was benefiting off of the notion that companies need to be afraid all around the world and that they need people like him to help them assess their risk and mitigate any kind of potential terrorist actions against these corporations. So, on the one hand, it’s the retired generals and other brass that are working in the war industry.

On the other hand, it’s people like Evan Kohlmann from Flashpoint Partners, who is on MSNBC, who is a total fraud and is constantly brought on as an expert. His so-called expert testimony has been used to put countless people away in prison on very dubious, thin terrorism charges. You have Samuel Laurent, who was on CNN for a couple of days—he’s been missing in action. We don’t know where he is. He doesn’t seem to be on CNN anymore. But Samuel Laurent, who is a French so-called terror expert, is widely viewed in France as a fraud, and people were up in arms when CNN put him on the air as a terrorism expert.

So, you know, part of what I think is the problem here is it’s—you know, CNN has actually really great international reporters, who have great experience on the ground. I have tremendous respect for many journalists, particularly in the international section, of CNN. But then they bring on these analysts who have a vested interest in revving up the fear engine, and they don’t disclose, in many cases, the built-in agenda of particularly some of these retired military people.

AARON MATÉ: Jeremy, as we wrap, I just want to ask you again about the story you broke about al-Qaeda in Yemen taking responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo massacre. What do you see is going on there with them coming forward to say that they financed the brothers, trained them? Because that would presumably invite an intensified U.S. drone war. And what questions or concerns do you have, going forward, in the aftermath of them taking credit?

JEREMYSCAHILL: Well, I mean, you know, this may be somewhat of a cynical read on this, but who really has benefited—the people that really have benefited most from the U.S. drone war in Yemen have not been ordinary Yemenis, have not been the people of the United States. The only real beneficiaries of that policy have been the manufacturers of drones and the missiles fired from the drones, and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, because when the U.S. conducts a drone strike and they kill innocent civilians, AQAP can use that for propaganda purposes. In the limited cases where they actually have killed individuals from AQAP, then they’re celebrated as martyrs. So I think that part of what AQAP is doing is trying to goad the United States into once again escalating or intensifying its drone campaign inside of Yemen, because it elevates the stature of AQAP. Now, it could be that AQAP had limited involvement and that all of the facts about it are already on the table. My sense is that if AQAP did indeed direct this plot, that they’re going to produce photographic or video evidence to back that up. If they don’t do that, then I think that, you know, it’s likely that the truth is that they had some involvement but were not effectively running the show.

AMYGOODMAN: And finally—we have 20 seconds—what’s repeated on so many networks, that Anwar al-Awlaki, before he was killed in a U.S. drone strike, was behind this terror attack on Charlie Hebdo?

JEREMYSCAHILL: Well, look, I mean, they try to link Anwar al-Awlaki to every plot under the sun. The fact is that Anwar al-Awlaki’s writings and speeches clearly have inspired so-called lone-wolf terrorists. No doubt about that. Whether he was operationally in charge of this is actually kind of a joke. Anwar al-Awlaki was not even mid-level management in AQAP. They’re exploiting his legacy because of the power of nightmares. He speaks in English. He aims his message at a Western, English-speaking audience. So the United States has elevated his status within the organization. AQAP has a leadership structure. Anwar al-Awlaki was not a senior figure within AQAP.

AMYGOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill, we want to thank you for being with us, co-founder of The Intercept, broke the story that AQAP took credit for the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, based on an al-Qaeda source in Yemen. Days later, AQAP put out an official statement confirming it took responsibility. Jeremy’s latest book, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield; his Oscar-nominated film, Dirty Wars, as well. He is an award-winning journalist.

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we go to Guatemala for a remarkable verdict that has just come down around crimes against humanity. Stay with us.

[break]

AMYGOODMAN: Charlie Haden and the Liberation Music Orchestra, "Spiritual," a song inspired by Medgar Evers, Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. And to see other choice picks of music inspired by or inspiring Dr. King, you can go to democracynow.org. A big shout out to Ruth Haden, who is the widow of Charlie Haden, who has joined us today at our studios just to come by and say hi. This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Aaron Maté.

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Tue, 20 Jan 2015 00:00:00 -0500Glenn Greenwald on How to Be a Terror "Expert": Ignore Facts, Blame Muslims, Trumpet U.S. Propagandahttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/1/13/glenn_greenwald_on_how_to_be
tag:democracynow.org,2015-01-13:en/story/1d9fd8 AARON MATÉ: As we continue to cover the fallout from last week&#8217;s attacks in Paris, we turn now to look at the growing field of so-called terrorism experts.
REV . AL SHARPTON : Back with me is NBC News terrorism analyst Evan Kohlmann.
EVAN KOHLMANN : The cleavages that exist in French society between Muslims and non-Muslims are far more severe than they exist here in the United States.
BROOKE BALDWIN : He is Samuel Laurent, live from Paris. He is the author of The Islamic State and al-Qaeda in France .
SAMUEL LAURENT : The landscape of jihadism and terrorism is deeply changing, and it&#8217;s proving to be a much harder task than it used to be for the intelligence service, because it&#8217;s very, very difficult now to spot and to stop the threats.
SEAN HANNITY : Joining me now, terrorism expert Steve Emerson.
STEVE EMERSON : Throughout Europe, Sean, you have no-go zones. When I was in Brussels a year ago, when I asked the police to take me to the Islamic zone or the Islamic community area, they refused. They say, &quot;We don&#8217;t go there.&quot; This goes on in Belgium. This goes on in Sweden, in the Netherlands, in France. It goes on in Italy. I mean, it goes on throughout Europe. So, there are no-go zones.
AARON MATÉ: A few of the so-called terrorism experts who have appeared on television over the past week. That last voice was Steven Emerson, who made international headlines this weekend after this appearance on Jeanine Pirro&#8217;s show on Fox News.
JEANINE PIRRO : Developing tonight, new reports that terrorist sleeper cells may have been activated in France. This as we&#8217;re learning new details about hundreds of no-go zones across France and other countries that are off-limits to non-Muslims. Steve Emerson, founder of the Investigative Project, joins us.
STEVE EMERSON : These no-go zones exist not only in France, but they exist throughout Europe. They&#8217;re sort of amorphous. They&#8217;re not contiguous, necessarily, but they&#8217;re sort of safe havens. And they&#8217;re places where the governments, like France, Britain, Sweden, Germany, they don&#8217;t exercise any sovereignty. So, you basically have zones where Sharia courts are set up, where Muslim density is very intense, where the police don&#8217;t go in, and where it&#8217;s basically a separate country almost, a country within a country. And—
JEANINE PIRRO : You know what it sounds like to me, Steve? It sounds like a caliphate within a particular country.
STEVE EMERSON : It certainly does sound like that. ... And in Britain, it&#8217;s not just no-go zones; there are actual cities, like Birmingham, that are totally Muslim, where non-Muslims just simply don&#8217;t go in.
AMY GOODMAN : While Steve Emerson claimed the British city of Birmingham was totally Muslim, it&#8217;s in fact a predominantly Christian city. Emerson, who describes himself as, quote, &quot;one of the leading authorities&quot; on Islamic extremist networks, appeared on the BBC Monday and apologized.
STEVE EMERSON : I relied on incorrect research. It was totally irresponsible for me not to have fact-checked the information that I obtained. And it was not done out of any malice, but out of a total irresponsible journalistic practice, which I usually and uniformly don&#8217;t practice.
NICK OWEN : Are you aware that our prime minister has called you a complete idiot?
STEVE EMERSON : Yes, I&#8217;m aware.
NICK OWEN : What does that make you feel?
STEVE EMERSON : Not great. You know, mistakes are made. What can I tell you?
AMY GOODMAN : While Steve Emerson is making headlines today, many questions have been raised about the entire field of so-called terrorism experts. Another so-called expert, Evan Kohlmann, has been described as &quot;the Doogie Howser of terrorism&quot; for building a career based on essays he wrote on al-Qaeda as an undergrad.
We&#8217;re joined now by two guests who have closely analyzed this issue. Joining us from Boston is Lisa Stampnitzky. She&#8217;s a lecturer on social studies at Harvard University and author of the book Disciplining Terror: How Experts Invented &quot;Terrorism.&quot; And from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, we&#8217;re joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, co-founder of The Intercept and author of No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA , and the U.S. Surveillance State .
Glenn, let&#8217;s begin with you. The terror attacks, the Paris attacks took place last week, and the so-called terror experts are in—very prominent all over the networks. Can you talk about who we are hearing from?
GLENN GREENWALD : The concept of terrorism is a very widely debated concept all over the world, and there are incredibly divergent opinions, even about what terrorism is, about who it is who&#8217;s perpetrating it, about how it is that you define it and understand it, and whether or not there&#8217;s even a meaningful definition of the term at all. And yet you have all of these so-called terrorism experts employed by leading American television networks—all of them, really—and on whom most establishment newspapers rely, who are called terrorism experts and yet who are incredibly homogenous in their views, because they spout the very homogenized American conception of all of those questions.
It&#8217;s an incredibly propagandized term. It&#8217;s an incredibly propagandistic set of theories that they have. And that&#8217;s really what these media outlets are doing, is they&#8217;re masquerading pro-U.S. propaganda, pro-U.S. government propaganda, as expertise, when it&#8217;s really anything but. These are incredibly ideological people. They&#8217;re very loyal to the view of the U.S. government about very controversial questions. They certainly have the right to express their opinions, but the pretense to expertise is incredibly fraudulent. And that&#8217;s why they have not just Steve Emerson, the Fox News strain, but really all of them who are held up as the most prominent terrorism experts in the U.S. have a really shameful history of incredible error and all sorts of just very dubious claims, because they&#8217;re really just rank propagandists.
AARON MATÉ: And so, Glenn, what allows them to continue perpetuating these myths that you describe? What is the dynamic that allows this expert industry to keep going?
GLENN GREENWALD : Well, there are several aspects to it. I mean, one is the United States government obviously has an interest in making people believe that its very particular and self-serving views of terrorism are not subjective or debatable, but are in fact just objective expertise, and so they do all sorts of things to prop these people up. They give them contracts. They pay them lots of money to teach people inside the government about terrorism. Really most disturbingly of all, they continuously call them as, quote-unquote, &quot;experts&quot; at terrorism trials. And all of these experts then dutifully march forth and say whatever the government wants about the Muslim defendants who are on trial, and help the government obtain conviction after conviction, and get a lot of money in the process.
Part of it is just the role that think tanks play in Washington, which is to lend this kind of intellectual artifice to whatever the government&#8217;s policy is or whatever the government wants. And so you have a lot of them who work at think tanks, like Brookings Institute, which employs Will McCants, who misled American media outlets into believing for a full day and then telling the world that the Anders Breivik attack in Norway was actually the work of a jihadist group. Even the more respectable ones are people who generally spout the conventional orthodoxies of the American government about terrorism, and therefore it&#8217;s very much in the interest of the U.S. government and these media outlets to continue to depict them not as polemicists and highly opinionated, you know, just participants in debates, but as actual academic experts. And that&#8217;s where the fraudulent aspect comes in.
AMY GOODMAN : I want to bring in Professor Lisa Stampnitzky. Again, your book is called Disciplining Terror: How Experts Invented &quot;Terrorism.&quot; What do you mean by &quot;disciplining terror&quot;? You carried out one of the first empirical studies of these so-called terror experts on television.
LISA STAMPNITZKY : That&#8217;s right. So, &quot;disciplining terror&quot; has a dual meaning. On the one hand, it refers to the attempts of states to get control over the problem of terrorism. On the other hand, it refers to the attempt to develop a discipline of terrorism studies. And that problematic field is the story that I&#8217;m telling in the book.
AARON MATÉ: What&#8217;s your assessment of the merits of this field in terms of its level of expertise and its seriousness?
LISA STAMPNITZKY : I mean, one of the conclusions I draw is that it&#8217;s a very peculiar field in terms of fields of expertise, because there is no strict boundary around it, there is no control according to who can be an expert. There&#8217;s no credentialing. And so, you have people coming on TV who are just sort of spouting hysteria and not drawing on any real expert knowledge. And even those who are more serious in the field have no ability to regulate who gets called an expert.
AMY GOODMAN : In 2008, self-described &quot;terrorism consultant&quot; Evan Kohlmann was interviewed on the public radio newshour The Takeway . Host John Hockenberry challenged Kohlmann on his level of expertise.
EVAN KOHLMANN : This is a far-ranging international conspiracy that began, you know, as many as two decades ago, involves hundreds of different people spread around, you know, various different places in the world, and it&#8217;s also based in a language and a culture that, you know, to be honest with you, very few Americans are familiar with.
JOHN HOCKENBERRY : Right, and in speaking of that, do you think, now that the movie has been played in open court, and, you know, you&#8217;ve achieved a certain amount of notoriety, that it might be time to learn Arabic, maybe go to Afghanistan or Pakistan—
EVAN KOHLMANN : Well, I mean, I—I mean, I—
JOHN HOCKENBERRY : —or familiarize yourself with the culture?
EVAN KOHLMANN : Well, I have a degree in Islam. And, I mean, I do speak some Arabic; I&#8217;m not fluent. But, you know, in terms of traveling to Pakistan, trying to do this research right now in Pakistan is extremely difficult. Trying to even get into Pakistan right now to do this is extremely difficult.
AMY GOODMAN : That&#8217;s Evan Kohlmann, an NBC News analyst. Glenn Greenwald, your comment?
GLENN GREENWALD : And there are so many of them like that. I mean, he&#8217;s one of the people called by the U.S. government in these prosecutions, these really dubious prosecutions, of American Muslims for really remote charges of material support for terrorism. And his expertise is basically just that he gets called an expert by the U.S. government. And the more he gets called to testify, the more that expertise builds. That&#8217;s really the only foundation for it, is that some people call him an expert because it&#8217;s in their interest to do so. There&#8217;s another one like him, Matthew Levitt, who was profiled in Harper&#8217;s , who has a long history of unbelievably erroneous claims that he makes in service of this agenda. They get paid a lot of money, too. I mean, he goes on—they go on NBC News. They get held up as a terrorism analyst. They get paid for that. They get called as an expert in court. And yet, as that tape said and as Lisa said, there&#8217;s really no foundation for the expertise. There&#8217;s no Ph.D.s that they have in terrorism studies.
There&#8217;s not even agreement about what the word &quot;terrorism&quot; means, which is why the old cliché that one man&#8217;s freedom fighter is another man&#8217;s terrorist is, though clichéd, is so resoundingly true. You can have debates about what terrorism is, about who perpetrates it, and yet all of these so-called experts simply assume the answers to those questions, because if they were, for example, to say that the U.S. government is a state sponsor of terrorism by virtue of its support for death squads in El Salvador or the Contras in Nicaragua or any of the other groups across the United States—across the world that the United States continues to support that engages in violence against civilians for political ends, you would immediately have them eliminated. No major network like CNN or MSNBC or NBC would ever call somebody like that a terrorism expert, even though that&#8217;s a very plausible claim to make. It&#8217;s an extremely ideological and politicized view that gets called expertise. And they don&#8217;t even have the basic attributes of what we generally consider that makes somebody an expert.
AARON MATÉ: Glenn, do you personally use the word &quot;terror,&quot; or do you avoid it entirely?
GLENN GREENWALD : I generally avoid it. I mean, you could probably find instances in my writing where I&#8217;ve invoked the term, usually just ironically or to refer to the fact that somebody else is using it. But I do think that until we have an understanding of what the term means, it really is a term that ought to be avoided.
There is some amazingly great scholarly research by Rémi Brulin, who was at the Sorbonne and then NYU , where he traces, essentially, the history of this term in political discourse. And what he has described, in a very scholarly way, is that the term &quot;terrorism&quot; really entered and became prevalent in the discourse of international affairs in the late &#39;60s and the early &#8217;70s, when the Israelis sought to use the term to universalize their disputes with their neighbors, so they could say, &quot;We&#39;re not fighting the Palestinians and we&#8217;re not bombing Lebanon over just some land disputes. We&#8217;re fighting this concept that is of great—a grave menace to the world, called &#39;terrorism.&#39; And it&#8217;s not only our fight, it&#8217;s your fight in the United States, and it&#8217;s your fight in Europe, and it&#8217;s your fight around the world.&quot;
And there are all these conferences in the late &#39;60s and early &#8217;70s and into the 1980s even, where Israelis and Americans and neocons are attempting to come up with a definition of the term &quot;terrorism&quot; that includes the violence that they want to delegitimize, meaning the violence by their adversaries, while legitimizing—excluding the violence they want to legitimize, namely our violence, the violence of Israel, the violence of our allies. And it was virtually impossible to come up with a definition, and that&#39;s why there really is no agreed-upon definition. The term is incredibly malleable, because it&#8217;s typically just meant as a term that says any violence we don&#8217;t like is something we&#8217;re going to call terrorism. And at this point it really just means violence engaged in by Muslims against the West. That&#8217;s really the definition of the term &quot;terrorism,&quot; the functional definition. It has no fixed definition.
AMY GOODMAN : Glenn, I remember at the beginning, at the Oklahoma City bombing attack, when two names of Arab men were floated. It turned out they were New York taxi drivers who had gone to Oklahoma City to renew their licenses. But those names were put out by the media, and then there was the question: Was this a terrorist attack? When it turned out it was Timothy McVeigh—Timothy McVeigh, who worked with other people, had all the—you know, all the definition of a terrorist attack—then it wasn&#8217;t. &quot;Oh, no, it was Timothy McVeigh, and he did this, a white Christian man.&quot; No longer did we refer to it as a terrorist attack.
GLENN GREENWALD : Right. I mean, that happens all the time. First of all, it was Steve Emerson, the very same Steve Emerson who just said that Birmingham was an all-Muslim city that no non-Muslims can enter, who was working at the time—either at the time for CNN or just afterwards, who went on, on the air, and was the most influential comment shaping what you just described. And he said the attempt here was to kill as many people as possible, which is a Middle East attribute, and therefore we should assume or highly speculate that this is likely an attack perpetrated by someone from the Middle East, someone who is Muslim. That&#8217;s how that narrative actually started. Steve Emerson&#8217;s career didn&#8217;t suffer at all from that.
But, you know, if you watch how these attacks are discussed, every time there&#8217;s an attack where the assailant or the perpetrator is unknown, the media will say it&#8217;s unknown whether or not terrorism is involved. And what they really mean by that is: It&#8217;s unknown whether or not the perpetrator is Muslim. And as soon as they discover that the perpetrator is a Christian or is American, a white American, they&#8217;ll say, &quot;We now have confirmation that this is not a terrorist attack.&quot; It&#8217;s something else—someone who&#8217;s mentally unstable, some extremist, something like that. It really is a term that functionally now means nothing other than Muslims who engage in violence against the West.
AMY GOODMAN : I mean, we have a perfect example right now in Colorado Springs. There was a bomb that was affixed that blew up outside the NAACP . The media is not saying right now, as the man is looked for, there is a search for a terrorist going on right now on our own soil in Colorado.
GLENN GREENWALD : Yeah, I remember there was an individual named Joseph Stack who flew an airplane into a government building in Texas, into the side of the IRS , actually. And for the first several hours of the reporting, it was said that the suspicion is that this is a terrorist attack, because it was on a government facility. And then when it was discovered that he was actually a right-wing, anti-tax, anti-government American, they said, actually, this isn&#8217;t a terrorist attack, this is just kind of this crazy person who did this for political ends.
You know, I was in Canada about two months ago when those two attacks happened, first one in Quebec and then the other one at the Parliament in Ottawa. And the first one, in the outskirts of Quebec, was somebody—two people who had waited two hours in a car to see a soldier, a Canadian soldier, and then targeted him and ran him over. And that was instantly branded a terrorist attack, even though they purposefully avoided targeting civilians and targeted a soldier of a country that is at war. It really is a term that is so muddled and confused in terms of how it&#8217;s used, and it is used for very specific agendas and very ideological purposes.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re going to break and then come back to this discussion. We are talking to Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept . We&#8217;re also speaking with Lisa Stampnitzky. She is a lecturer at Harvard University, author of Disciplining Terror: How Experts Invented &quot;Terrorism.&quot; Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . I&#8217;m Amy Goodman, with Aaron Maté. Our guests are Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept , Lisa Stampnitzky of Harvard University, who wrote the book Disciplining Terror . And we&#8217;re joined from Paris by Luc Mathieu, the foreign affairs reporter for the French newspaper Libération , who has written critically of so-called terrorism expert Samuel Laurent. He appeared on CNN last week with host Brooke Baldwin. This is Samuel Laurent.
BROOKE BALDWIN : He is Samuel Laurent, live from Paris. He is the author of The Islamic State and al-Qaeda in France . Samuel, nice to see you, sir. Here&#8217;s my question. You know, Fareed was making the point about how this totally seems to be changing the game, the face of terror. These are, you know, seemingly local, perhaps French natives from perhaps a much larger organization. When you watch the video, very trained. What&#8217;s your read on this?
SAMUEL LAURENT : Mm-hmm. Well, basically, what you have to understand is that the situation has changed a lot from the time of al-Qaeda. Basically, Qaeda was operating cells. They were breeding them, and they were targeting a specific objective. Nowadays with the Islamic State, what has changed is that the caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is supposed to be the leader of the believers, so therefore he issues some orders at wide. And basically, some of his orders in October and November has been to kill the French, by any possible means. That was his words.
AMY GOODMAN : That&#8217;s Samuel Laurent, often seen on CNN . Luc Mathieu, you&#8217;re with the French newspaper Libération . You have written about who Samuel Laurent is. Can you talk about him?
LUC MATHIEU : Well, it&#8217;s difficult to talk about him, because he is not a journalist. He is not an analyst. He is not a former diplomat. He is not a former member of an intelligence community. I mean, he&#8217;s describing himself as an international consultant, which doesn&#8217;t mean any—which doesn&#8217;t mean nothing. So, he wrote like three books, and one was culturally interesting, which was Al-Qaeda in France . So I investigate on that book, and basically nothing is holding together. I mean, facts are not matching. Places he&#8217;s supposed to go are not matching. So, there are a lot of mistakes and a lot of approximations and a lot of nonsense in his books.
AARON MATÉ: Lisa Stampnitzky, I want to ask you, what do you think the experts are missing? What issues should they be looking at that these so-called experts are not?
LISA STAMPNITZKY : I mean, I think one of the key difficulties is, A, as Glenn mentioned, that there is no settled definition of what terrorism is, and that insofar as there is a common understanding of what terrorism is, it tends to be that it&#8217;s violence that we don&#8217;t like. And one of the most interesting things that I show in my book is that that wasn&#8217;t always the case. I look at debates on terrorism from the 1970s until 2001. And if you look at when people were first starting to talk about terrorism in the early 1970s, they were talking about it in a very different way.
So, Glenn mentioned this cliché: One man&#8217;s terrorist is another man&#8217;s freedom fighter. And that seems almost obvious today, that these are opposed, that you can&#8217;t be a terrorist and a freedom fighter. But if you look at the way that people were talking about terrorism or political violence of this sort in the late &#39;60s and early 1970s, this wasn&#39;t considered to be in opposition. There wasn&#8217;t this assumption that acts of terror as a tactic were necessarily something that was done by people who we think are evil. There was not this moral overlay over it. And this has come to be understood as so basic to understanding of terrorism now that it really clouds any attempt to understand the issue.
AMY GOODMAN : And let me go back to Luc in Paris—first of all, our condolences—and what you&#8217;re writing about right now in Libération , what you feel these terrorism experts do not bring us that we should understand about what&#8217;s happening in France.
LUC MATHIEU : It&#8217;s perhaps too early to say and to be sure of it. We have to look back at al-Qaeda history, because it comes from al-Qaeda in Yemen. We have to look deeply into Islamic State, because one of the three assailants said he was from Islamic State. So, it&#8217;s a lot—it&#8217;s very messy right now in France, because a lot of people are trying to know exactly where those guys come from, where they went, what they wanted to do exactly. So it&#8217;s a bit early to say. I think we are missing. We are missing that. We are still searching a lot.
AARON MATÉ: I want to go back to Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, a former prosecutor. This is from her show on Saturday.
JEANINE PIRRO : We need to kill them. We need to kill them, the radical Muslim terrorists hell-bent on killing us. You&#8217;re in danger. I&#8217;m in danger. We&#8217;re at war, and this is not going to stop. After this week&#8217;s brutal terror attacks in France, hopefully everybody now gets it. And there&#8217;s only one group that can stop this war: the Muslims themselves. Our job is to arm those Muslims to the teeth, give them everything they need to take out these Islamic fanatics. Let them do the job. Let them have at it. And as they do, we need to simply look the other way.
AARON MATÉ: That&#8217;s Jeanine Pirro of Fox News, a former prosecutor in Westchester, also a former judge. Glenn Greenwald, it&#8217;s easy to make fun of Fox News, but your response to this? And how does—how do attitudes like these play out in the corporate media, generally?
GLENN GREENWALD : I mean, you know, if you listen to her, Jeanine Pirro, that clip you just played, I mean, she&#8217;s obviously psychotic. I mean, that&#8217;s just like bloodthirsty fascism in its purest, you know, expression. But I don&#8217;t really think that the substance of what she&#8217;s saying, to the extent one can attribute substance to those comments, is really all that rare or even controversial in the U.S. I mean, we have been a country that has declared ourselves at war with some formulation of Islam, radical Muslims, whatever you want to call it, something that John Kerry actually just affirmed a few days ago, that the French president and others have embraced, as well, over the last week.
And I think this is one of the most pernicious aspects of these so-called terrorism experts and terrorism expertise, which is, if you are an American citizen or if you&#8217;re a French citizen or if you&#8217;re a British citizen, you have a greater chance of being killed by slipping in the bathtub tonight and hitting your head on the ceramic tile, or being struck by lightning—literally—than you do dying in a terrorist attack. And yet these terrorism experts have it in their interest to constantly hype and exaggerate the threat and fearmonger over it, because that&#8217;s how they become relevant. They become relevant in terms of their work. They become relevant in terms of their government contracts and in terms of the money that they make. And it really has infected large parts of Western thinking to view terrorism as a much, much greater threat than just rationally and statistically it really is. And I think that&#8217;s—a big part of that is at the feet of these so-called terrorism experts.
AMY GOODMAN : I want to thank Luc Mathieu, speaking to us from Paris, from Libération . I also want to thank Lisa Stampnitzky, who wrote Disciplining Terror , speaking to us from Boston, Harvard lecturer. AARON MATÉ: As we continue to cover the fallout from last week’s attacks in Paris, we turn now to look at the growing field of so-called terrorism experts.

EVANKOHLMANN: The cleavages that exist in French society between Muslims and non-Muslims are far more severe than they exist here in the United States.

BROOKEBALDWIN: He is Samuel Laurent, live from Paris. He is the author of The Islamic State and al-Qaeda in France.

SAMUELLAURENT: The landscape of jihadism and terrorism is deeply changing, and it’s proving to be a much harder task than it used to be for the intelligence service, because it’s very, very difficult now to spot and to stop the threats.

SEANHANNITY: Joining me now, terrorism expert Steve Emerson.

STEVEEMERSON: Throughout Europe, Sean, you have no-go zones. When I was in Brussels a year ago, when I asked the police to take me to the Islamic zone or the Islamic community area, they refused. They say, "We don’t go there." This goes on in Belgium. This goes on in Sweden, in the Netherlands, in France. It goes on in Italy. I mean, it goes on throughout Europe. So, there are no-go zones.

AARON MATÉ: A few of the so-called terrorism experts who have appeared on television over the past week. That last voice was Steven Emerson, who made international headlines this weekend after this appearance on Jeanine Pirro’s show on Fox News.

JEANINEPIRRO: Developing tonight, new reports that terrorist sleeper cells may have been activated in France. This as we’re learning new details about hundreds of no-go zones across France and other countries that are off-limits to non-Muslims. Steve Emerson, founder of the Investigative Project, joins us.

STEVEEMERSON: These no-go zones exist not only in France, but they exist throughout Europe. They’re sort of amorphous. They’re not contiguous, necessarily, but they’re sort of safe havens. And they’re places where the governments, like France, Britain, Sweden, Germany, they don’t exercise any sovereignty. So, you basically have zones where Sharia courts are set up, where Muslim density is very intense, where the police don’t go in, and where it’s basically a separate country almost, a country within a country. And—

JEANINEPIRRO: You know what it sounds like to me, Steve? It sounds like a caliphate within a particular country.

STEVEEMERSON: It certainly does sound like that. ... And in Britain, it’s not just no-go zones; there are actual cities, like Birmingham, that are totally Muslim, where non-Muslims just simply don’t go in.

AMYGOODMAN: While Steve Emerson claimed the British city of Birmingham was totally Muslim, it’s in fact a predominantly Christian city. Emerson, who describes himself as, quote, "one of the leading authorities" on Islamic extremist networks, appeared on the BBC Monday and apologized.

STEVEEMERSON: I relied on incorrect research. It was totally irresponsible for me not to have fact-checked the information that I obtained. And it was not done out of any malice, but out of a total irresponsible journalistic practice, which I usually and uniformly don’t practice.

NICKOWEN: Are you aware that our prime minister has called you a complete idiot?

STEVEEMERSON: Yes, I’m aware.

NICKOWEN: What does that make you feel?

STEVEEMERSON: Not great. You know, mistakes are made. What can I tell you?

AMYGOODMAN: While Steve Emerson is making headlines today, many questions have been raised about the entire field of so-called terrorism experts. Another so-called expert, Evan Kohlmann, has been described as "the Doogie Howser of terrorism" for building a career based on essays he wrote on al-Qaeda as an undergrad.

We’re joined now by two guests who have closely analyzed this issue. Joining us from Boston is Lisa Stampnitzky. She’s a lecturer on social studies at Harvard University and author of the book Disciplining Terror: How Experts Invented "Terrorism." And from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, we’re joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, co-founder of The Intercept and author of No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State.

Glenn, let’s begin with you. The terror attacks, the Paris attacks took place last week, and the so-called terror experts are in—very prominent all over the networks. Can you talk about who we are hearing from?

GLENNGREENWALD: The concept of terrorism is a very widely debated concept all over the world, and there are incredibly divergent opinions, even about what terrorism is, about who it is who’s perpetrating it, about how it is that you define it and understand it, and whether or not there’s even a meaningful definition of the term at all. And yet you have all of these so-called terrorism experts employed by leading American television networks—all of them, really—and on whom most establishment newspapers rely, who are called terrorism experts and yet who are incredibly homogenous in their views, because they spout the very homogenized American conception of all of those questions.

It’s an incredibly propagandized term. It’s an incredibly propagandistic set of theories that they have. And that’s really what these media outlets are doing, is they’re masquerading pro-U.S. propaganda, pro-U.S. government propaganda, as expertise, when it’s really anything but. These are incredibly ideological people. They’re very loyal to the view of the U.S. government about very controversial questions. They certainly have the right to express their opinions, but the pretense to expertise is incredibly fraudulent. And that’s why they have not just Steve Emerson, the Fox News strain, but really all of them who are held up as the most prominent terrorism experts in the U.S. have a really shameful history of incredible error and all sorts of just very dubious claims, because they’re really just rank propagandists.

AARON MATÉ: And so, Glenn, what allows them to continue perpetuating these myths that you describe? What is the dynamic that allows this expert industry to keep going?

GLENNGREENWALD: Well, there are several aspects to it. I mean, one is the United States government obviously has an interest in making people believe that its very particular and self-serving views of terrorism are not subjective or debatable, but are in fact just objective expertise, and so they do all sorts of things to prop these people up. They give them contracts. They pay them lots of money to teach people inside the government about terrorism. Really most disturbingly of all, they continuously call them as, quote-unquote, "experts" at terrorism trials. And all of these experts then dutifully march forth and say whatever the government wants about the Muslim defendants who are on trial, and help the government obtain conviction after conviction, and get a lot of money in the process.

Part of it is just the role that think tanks play in Washington, which is to lend this kind of intellectual artifice to whatever the government’s policy is or whatever the government wants. And so you have a lot of them who work at think tanks, like Brookings Institute, which employs Will McCants, who misled American media outlets into believing for a full day and then telling the world that the Anders Breivik attack in Norway was actually the work of a jihadist group. Even the more respectable ones are people who generally spout the conventional orthodoxies of the American government about terrorism, and therefore it’s very much in the interest of the U.S. government and these media outlets to continue to depict them not as polemicists and highly opinionated, you know, just participants in debates, but as actual academic experts. And that’s where the fraudulent aspect comes in.

AMYGOODMAN: I want to bring in Professor Lisa Stampnitzky. Again, your book is called Disciplining Terror: How Experts Invented "Terrorism." What do you mean by "disciplining terror"? You carried out one of the first empirical studies of these so-called terror experts on television.

LISASTAMPNITZKY: That’s right. So, "disciplining terror" has a dual meaning. On the one hand, it refers to the attempts of states to get control over the problem of terrorism. On the other hand, it refers to the attempt to develop a discipline of terrorism studies. And that problematic field is the story that I’m telling in the book.

AARON MATÉ: What’s your assessment of the merits of this field in terms of its level of expertise and its seriousness?

LISASTAMPNITZKY: I mean, one of the conclusions I draw is that it’s a very peculiar field in terms of fields of expertise, because there is no strict boundary around it, there is no control according to who can be an expert. There’s no credentialing. And so, you have people coming on TV who are just sort of spouting hysteria and not drawing on any real expert knowledge. And even those who are more serious in the field have no ability to regulate who gets called an expert.

AMYGOODMAN: In 2008, self-described "terrorism consultant" Evan Kohlmann was interviewed on the public radio newshour The Takeway. Host John Hockenberry challenged Kohlmann on his level of expertise.

EVANKOHLMANN: This is a far-ranging international conspiracy that began, you know, as many as two decades ago, involves hundreds of different people spread around, you know, various different places in the world, and it’s also based in a language and a culture that, you know, to be honest with you, very few Americans are familiar with.

JOHNHOCKENBERRY: Right, and in speaking of that, do you think, now that the movie has been played in open court, and, you know, you’ve achieved a certain amount of notoriety, that it might be time to learn Arabic, maybe go to Afghanistan or Pakistan—

EVANKOHLMANN: Well, I mean, I—I mean, I—

JOHNHOCKENBERRY: —or familiarize yourself with the culture?

EVANKOHLMANN: Well, I have a degree in Islam. And, I mean, I do speak some Arabic; I’m not fluent. But, you know, in terms of traveling to Pakistan, trying to do this research right now in Pakistan is extremely difficult. Trying to even get into Pakistan right now to do this is extremely difficult.

GLENNGREENWALD: And there are so many of them like that. I mean, he’s one of the people called by the U.S. government in these prosecutions, these really dubious prosecutions, of American Muslims for really remote charges of material support for terrorism. And his expertise is basically just that he gets called an expert by the U.S. government. And the more he gets called to testify, the more that expertise builds. That’s really the only foundation for it, is that some people call him an expert because it’s in their interest to do so. There’s another one like him, Matthew Levitt, who was profiled in Harper’s, who has a long history of unbelievably erroneous claims that he makes in service of this agenda. They get paid a lot of money, too. I mean, he goes on—they go on NBC News. They get held up as a terrorism analyst. They get paid for that. They get called as an expert in court. And yet, as that tape said and as Lisa said, there’s really no foundation for the expertise. There’s no Ph.D.s that they have in terrorism studies.

There’s not even agreement about what the word "terrorism" means, which is why the old cliché that one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist is, though clichéd, is so resoundingly true. You can have debates about what terrorism is, about who perpetrates it, and yet all of these so-called experts simply assume the answers to those questions, because if they were, for example, to say that the U.S. government is a state sponsor of terrorism by virtue of its support for death squads in El Salvador or the Contras in Nicaragua or any of the other groups across the United States—across the world that the United States continues to support that engages in violence against civilians for political ends, you would immediately have them eliminated. No major network like CNN or MSNBC or NBC would ever call somebody like that a terrorism expert, even though that’s a very plausible claim to make. It’s an extremely ideological and politicized view that gets called expertise. And they don’t even have the basic attributes of what we generally consider that makes somebody an expert.

AARON MATÉ: Glenn, do you personally use the word "terror," or do you avoid it entirely?

GLENNGREENWALD: I generally avoid it. I mean, you could probably find instances in my writing where I’ve invoked the term, usually just ironically or to refer to the fact that somebody else is using it. But I do think that until we have an understanding of what the term means, it really is a term that ought to be avoided.

There is some amazingly great scholarly research by Rémi Brulin, who was at the Sorbonne and then NYU, where he traces, essentially, the history of this term in political discourse. And what he has described, in a very scholarly way, is that the term "terrorism" really entered and became prevalent in the discourse of international affairs in the late '60s and the early ’70s, when the Israelis sought to use the term to universalize their disputes with their neighbors, so they could say, "We're not fighting the Palestinians and we’re not bombing Lebanon over just some land disputes. We’re fighting this concept that is of great—a grave menace to the world, called 'terrorism.' And it’s not only our fight, it’s your fight in the United States, and it’s your fight in Europe, and it’s your fight around the world."

And there are all these conferences in the late '60s and early ’70s and into the 1980s even, where Israelis and Americans and neocons are attempting to come up with a definition of the term "terrorism" that includes the violence that they want to delegitimize, meaning the violence by their adversaries, while legitimizing—excluding the violence they want to legitimize, namely our violence, the violence of Israel, the violence of our allies. And it was virtually impossible to come up with a definition, and that's why there really is no agreed-upon definition. The term is incredibly malleable, because it’s typically just meant as a term that says any violence we don’t like is something we’re going to call terrorism. And at this point it really just means violence engaged in by Muslims against the West. That’s really the definition of the term "terrorism," the functional definition. It has no fixed definition.

AMYGOODMAN: Glenn, I remember at the beginning, at the Oklahoma City bombing attack, when two names of Arab men were floated. It turned out they were New York taxi drivers who had gone to Oklahoma City to renew their licenses. But those names were put out by the media, and then there was the question: Was this a terrorist attack? When it turned out it was Timothy McVeigh—Timothy McVeigh, who worked with other people, had all the—you know, all the definition of a terrorist attack—then it wasn’t. "Oh, no, it was Timothy McVeigh, and he did this, a white Christian man." No longer did we refer to it as a terrorist attack.

GLENNGREENWALD: Right. I mean, that happens all the time. First of all, it was Steve Emerson, the very same Steve Emerson who just said that Birmingham was an all-Muslim city that no non-Muslims can enter, who was working at the time—either at the time for CNN or just afterwards, who went on, on the air, and was the most influential comment shaping what you just described. And he said the attempt here was to kill as many people as possible, which is a Middle East attribute, and therefore we should assume or highly speculate that this is likely an attack perpetrated by someone from the Middle East, someone who is Muslim. That’s how that narrative actually started. Steve Emerson’s career didn’t suffer at all from that.

But, you know, if you watch how these attacks are discussed, every time there’s an attack where the assailant or the perpetrator is unknown, the media will say it’s unknown whether or not terrorism is involved. And what they really mean by that is: It’s unknown whether or not the perpetrator is Muslim. And as soon as they discover that the perpetrator is a Christian or is American, a white American, they’ll say, "We now have confirmation that this is not a terrorist attack." It’s something else—someone who’s mentally unstable, some extremist, something like that. It really is a term that functionally now means nothing other than Muslims who engage in violence against the West.

AMYGOODMAN: I mean, we have a perfect example right now in Colorado Springs. There was a bomb that was affixed that blew up outside the NAACP. The media is not saying right now, as the man is looked for, there is a search for a terrorist going on right now on our own soil in Colorado.

GLENNGREENWALD: Yeah, I remember there was an individual named Joseph Stack who flew an airplane into a government building in Texas, into the side of the IRS, actually. And for the first several hours of the reporting, it was said that the suspicion is that this is a terrorist attack, because it was on a government facility. And then when it was discovered that he was actually a right-wing, anti-tax, anti-government American, they said, actually, this isn’t a terrorist attack, this is just kind of this crazy person who did this for political ends.

You know, I was in Canada about two months ago when those two attacks happened, first one in Quebec and then the other one at the Parliament in Ottawa. And the first one, in the outskirts of Quebec, was somebody—two people who had waited two hours in a car to see a soldier, a Canadian soldier, and then targeted him and ran him over. And that was instantly branded a terrorist attack, even though they purposefully avoided targeting civilians and targeted a soldier of a country that is at war. It really is a term that is so muddled and confused in terms of how it’s used, and it is used for very specific agendas and very ideological purposes.

AMYGOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back to this discussion. We are talking to Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept. We’re also speaking with Lisa Stampnitzky. She is a lecturer at Harvard University, author of Disciplining Terror: How Experts Invented "Terrorism." Stay with us.

[break]

AMYGOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Aaron Maté. Our guests are Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept, Lisa Stampnitzky of Harvard University, who wrote the book Disciplining Terror. And we’re joined from Paris by Luc Mathieu, the foreign affairs reporter for the French newspaper Libération, who has written critically of so-called terrorism expert Samuel Laurent. He appeared on CNN last week with host Brooke Baldwin. This is Samuel Laurent.

BROOKEBALDWIN: He is Samuel Laurent, live from Paris. He is the author of The Islamic State and al-Qaeda in France. Samuel, nice to see you, sir. Here’s my question. You know, Fareed was making the point about how this totally seems to be changing the game, the face of terror. These are, you know, seemingly local, perhaps French natives from perhaps a much larger organization. When you watch the video, very trained. What’s your read on this?

SAMUELLAURENT: Mm-hmm. Well, basically, what you have to understand is that the situation has changed a lot from the time of al-Qaeda. Basically, Qaeda was operating cells. They were breeding them, and they were targeting a specific objective. Nowadays with the Islamic State, what has changed is that the caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is supposed to be the leader of the believers, so therefore he issues some orders at wide. And basically, some of his orders in October and November has been to kill the French, by any possible means. That was his words.

AMYGOODMAN: That’s Samuel Laurent, often seen on CNN. Luc Mathieu, you’re with the French newspaper Libération. You have written about who Samuel Laurent is. Can you talk about him?

LUCMATHIEU: Well, it’s difficult to talk about him, because he is not a journalist. He is not an analyst. He is not a former diplomat. He is not a former member of an intelligence community. I mean, he’s describing himself as an international consultant, which doesn’t mean any—which doesn’t mean nothing. So, he wrote like three books, and one was culturally interesting, which was Al-Qaeda in France. So I investigate on that book, and basically nothing is holding together. I mean, facts are not matching. Places he’s supposed to go are not matching. So, there are a lot of mistakes and a lot of approximations and a lot of nonsense in his books.

AARON MATÉ: Lisa Stampnitzky, I want to ask you, what do you think the experts are missing? What issues should they be looking at that these so-called experts are not?

LISASTAMPNITZKY: I mean, I think one of the key difficulties is, A, as Glenn mentioned, that there is no settled definition of what terrorism is, and that insofar as there is a common understanding of what terrorism is, it tends to be that it’s violence that we don’t like. And one of the most interesting things that I show in my book is that that wasn’t always the case. I look at debates on terrorism from the 1970s until 2001. And if you look at when people were first starting to talk about terrorism in the early 1970s, they were talking about it in a very different way.

So, Glenn mentioned this cliché: One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. And that seems almost obvious today, that these are opposed, that you can’t be a terrorist and a freedom fighter. But if you look at the way that people were talking about terrorism or political violence of this sort in the late '60s and early 1970s, this wasn't considered to be in opposition. There wasn’t this assumption that acts of terror as a tactic were necessarily something that was done by people who we think are evil. There was not this moral overlay over it. And this has come to be understood as so basic to understanding of terrorism now that it really clouds any attempt to understand the issue.

AMYGOODMAN: And let me go back to Luc in Paris—first of all, our condolences—and what you’re writing about right now in Libération, what you feel these terrorism experts do not bring us that we should understand about what’s happening in France.

LUCMATHIEU: It’s perhaps too early to say and to be sure of it. We have to look back at al-Qaeda history, because it comes from al-Qaeda in Yemen. We have to look deeply into Islamic State, because one of the three assailants said he was from Islamic State. So, it’s a lot—it’s very messy right now in France, because a lot of people are trying to know exactly where those guys come from, where they went, what they wanted to do exactly. So it’s a bit early to say. I think we are missing. We are missing that. We are still searching a lot.

AARON MATÉ: I want to go back to Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, a former prosecutor. This is from her show on Saturday.

JEANINEPIRRO: We need to kill them. We need to kill them, the radical Muslim terrorists hell-bent on killing us. You’re in danger. I’m in danger. We’re at war, and this is not going to stop. After this week’s brutal terror attacks in France, hopefully everybody now gets it. And there’s only one group that can stop this war: the Muslims themselves. Our job is to arm those Muslims to the teeth, give them everything they need to take out these Islamic fanatics. Let them do the job. Let them have at it. And as they do, we need to simply look the other way.

AARON MATÉ: That’s Jeanine Pirro of Fox News, a former prosecutor in Westchester, also a former judge. Glenn Greenwald, it’s easy to make fun of Fox News, but your response to this? And how does—how do attitudes like these play out in the corporate media, generally?

GLENNGREENWALD: I mean, you know, if you listen to her, Jeanine Pirro, that clip you just played, I mean, she’s obviously psychotic. I mean, that’s just like bloodthirsty fascism in its purest, you know, expression. But I don’t really think that the substance of what she’s saying, to the extent one can attribute substance to those comments, is really all that rare or even controversial in the U.S. I mean, we have been a country that has declared ourselves at war with some formulation of Islam, radical Muslims, whatever you want to call it, something that John Kerry actually just affirmed a few days ago, that the French president and others have embraced, as well, over the last week.

And I think this is one of the most pernicious aspects of these so-called terrorism experts and terrorism expertise, which is, if you are an American citizen or if you’re a French citizen or if you’re a British citizen, you have a greater chance of being killed by slipping in the bathtub tonight and hitting your head on the ceramic tile, or being struck by lightning—literally—than you do dying in a terrorist attack. And yet these terrorism experts have it in their interest to constantly hype and exaggerate the threat and fearmonger over it, because that’s how they become relevant. They become relevant in terms of their work. They become relevant in terms of their government contracts and in terms of the money that they make. And it really has infected large parts of Western thinking to view terrorism as a much, much greater threat than just rationally and statistically it really is. And I think that’s—a big part of that is at the feet of these so-called terrorism experts.

AMYGOODMAN: I want to thank Luc Mathieu, speaking to us from Paris, from Libération. I also want to thank Lisa Stampnitzky, who wrote Disciplining Terror, speaking to us from Boston, Harvard lecturer.

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Tue, 13 Jan 2015 00:00:00 -0500Massacre in Nigeria: Up to 2,000 Feared Dead in Boko Haram's Worst Attack to Datehttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/1/13/massacre_in_nigeria_up_to_2
tag:democracynow.org,2015-01-13:en/story/5402c5 AARON MATÉ: As the world focused on the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, a massive atrocity was unfolding in Nigeria. On January 3rd, the Islamist militant group Boko Haram attacked the northern town of Baga and surrounding areas. Over the next several days, hundreds, possibly thousands, of civilians were killed. Fleeing residents were chased into the bush and shot dead, others reportedly drowning in Lake Chad as they tried to swim away. Scores of homes were burned to the ground, and bodies were strewn in the streets. Estimates of the dead range from around 500 to up to 2,000. Some 30,000 people were also displaced.
AMY GOODMAN : Amnesty International says the assault on Baga could be the deadliest of the Boko Haram&#8217;s six-year insurgency.
For more, we&#8217;re joined by Adotei Akwei, managing director of government relations for Amnesty International USA , joining us from Washington.
Adotei, thank you for joining us. Talk about what you understand at this point has taken place in Nigeria.
ADOTEI AKWEI : Thank you for having me. As Aaron said, there was a major offensive by Boko Haram about two weekends ago. They overran the Nigerian forces, who ran out of supplies and basically started to flee. And Boko Haram, after consolidating control over the town, the village of Baga, began to systematically execute people, first executing all potential male fighters that could oppose them, but then beginning a rather indiscriminate slaughter of the elderly and of people who could not flee. And to this day, we do not have access to Baga, because it&#8217;s too dangerous. The Nigerian forces have not tried to retake the town. And all we&#8217;re—we&#8217;re just trying to piece together information about how bad the killings were.
AMY GOODMAN : The Nigerian military responded to the Baga massacre by appealing for international support. In a statement, a government spokesperson suggested the attack should end critics of the army&#8217;s own alleged abuses, saying, quote, &quot;The attack ... should convince well-meaning people all over the world that Boko Haram is the evil all must collaborate to end, rather than vilifying those working to check them.&quot; Adotei Akwei, this appears to be a message to groups like Amnesty International who have accused the military of war crimes during its fight against Boko Haram and other armed groups.
ADOTEI AKWEI : That&#8217;s absolutely correct. The Nigerian armed forces, as well as the administration, have had a very consistent line of demanding or requesting assistance on their terms. Amnesty International has documented at least 5,000 people who have been killed by the Nigerian security forces. We&#8217;ve also had reports last—we issued a report last fall about detention where torture was basically the modus operandi , and there have been no investigations and certainly no accountability. This has been the major impediment for assistance from the United States to the Nigerian military. And so, it is rather stunning, or rather disappointing, but still stunning, that the Nigerian military is basically making the argument that the slaughter by Boko Haram is bad enough that it doesn&#8217;t matter what methods they use, which of course leaves the Nigerian civilian population at increased risk.
AMY GOODMAN : Why the disparity in the number of people that are believed dead? The Nigerian government itself is saying like 150, 160 people. You&#8217;re saying you believe 2,000 people were killed last week.
ADOTEI AKWEI : That is correct. And again, we&#8217;re working with people who are providing information, you know, and, of course, accurate, precise numbers will take some time to get to. But the Nigerian government has, first, initially downplayed the Boko Haram threat by underreporting numbers. Then they have almost—they&#8217;ve also denied actual events have taken place, and they&#8217;ve also claimed certain counteroffensives that have never been proven to have actually occurred. So, I think we&#8217;re dealing with an administration and with security forces that are determined to control the narrative and the information, and I think that that&#8217;s a disservice to the Nigerian people.
AARON MATÉ: Adotei, what accounts for the Nigerian military&#8217;s inability to stop these attacks? The Council on Foreign Relations says over 10,000 killed by the Boko Haram last year. It&#8217;s been almost a year since over 200 schoolgirls were kidnapped, spawning the &quot;Bring Back Our Girls&quot; campaign. Most of them have not been found. Why have they been so incapable to do anything in the north?
ADOTEI AKWEI : There are a number of reasons. The first that almost everyone agrees on is that corruption has basically weakened the capacity of the military to operate. When Boko Haram seized Baga two weekends ago, the military ran out of ammunition, and then they had to flee. And that was a similar situation in other attacks on villages. So, there&#8217;s a capacity issue, which the Nigerian military acknowledges, but does not actually reveal the extent of which. The second, I think, is the morale issue.
AMY GOODMAN : We have 10 seconds.
ADOTEI AKWEI : Sure. The morale issue, I think, is reflective of some disquiet with the hard-line response that targets males in the region as if they were Boko Haram supporters until they prove themselves innocent. And I think the third is just a question of the actual tactics.
AMY GOODMAN : Adotei, we have to leave it there, Adotei Akwei with Amnesty International. Of course, we&#8217;ll continue to cover this issue. AARON MATÉ: As the world focused on the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, a massive atrocity was unfolding in Nigeria. On January 3rd, the Islamist militant group Boko Haram attacked the northern town of Baga and surrounding areas. Over the next several days, hundreds, possibly thousands, of civilians were killed. Fleeing residents were chased into the bush and shot dead, others reportedly drowning in Lake Chad as they tried to swim away. Scores of homes were burned to the ground, and bodies were strewn in the streets. Estimates of the dead range from around 500 to up to 2,000. Some 30,000 people were also displaced.

AMYGOODMAN: Amnesty International says the assault on Baga could be the deadliest of the Boko Haram’s six-year insurgency.

For more, we’re joined by Adotei Akwei, managing director of government relations for Amnesty International USA, joining us from Washington.

Adotei, thank you for joining us. Talk about what you understand at this point has taken place in Nigeria.

ADOTEIAKWEI: Thank you for having me. As Aaron said, there was a major offensive by Boko Haram about two weekends ago. They overran the Nigerian forces, who ran out of supplies and basically started to flee. And Boko Haram, after consolidating control over the town, the village of Baga, began to systematically execute people, first executing all potential male fighters that could oppose them, but then beginning a rather indiscriminate slaughter of the elderly and of people who could not flee. And to this day, we do not have access to Baga, because it’s too dangerous. The Nigerian forces have not tried to retake the town. And all we’re—we’re just trying to piece together information about how bad the killings were.

AMYGOODMAN: The Nigerian military responded to the Baga massacre by appealing for international support. In a statement, a government spokesperson suggested the attack should end critics of the army’s own alleged abuses, saying, quote, "The attack ... should convince well-meaning people all over the world that Boko Haram is the evil all must collaborate to end, rather than vilifying those working to check them." Adotei Akwei, this appears to be a message to groups like Amnesty International who have accused the military of war crimes during its fight against Boko Haram and other armed groups.

ADOTEIAKWEI: That’s absolutely correct. The Nigerian armed forces, as well as the administration, have had a very consistent line of demanding or requesting assistance on their terms. Amnesty International has documented at least 5,000 people who have been killed by the Nigerian security forces. We’ve also had reports last—we issued a report last fall about detention where torture was basically the modus operandi, and there have been no investigations and certainly no accountability. This has been the major impediment for assistance from the United States to the Nigerian military. And so, it is rather stunning, or rather disappointing, but still stunning, that the Nigerian military is basically making the argument that the slaughter by Boko Haram is bad enough that it doesn’t matter what methods they use, which of course leaves the Nigerian civilian population at increased risk.

AMYGOODMAN: Why the disparity in the number of people that are believed dead? The Nigerian government itself is saying like 150, 160 people. You’re saying you believe 2,000 people were killed last week.

ADOTEIAKWEI: That is correct. And again, we’re working with people who are providing information, you know, and, of course, accurate, precise numbers will take some time to get to. But the Nigerian government has, first, initially downplayed the Boko Haram threat by underreporting numbers. Then they have almost—they’ve also denied actual events have taken place, and they’ve also claimed certain counteroffensives that have never been proven to have actually occurred. So, I think we’re dealing with an administration and with security forces that are determined to control the narrative and the information, and I think that that’s a disservice to the Nigerian people.

AARON MATÉ: Adotei, what accounts for the Nigerian military’s inability to stop these attacks? The Council on Foreign Relations says over 10,000 killed by the Boko Haram last year. It’s been almost a year since over 200 schoolgirls were kidnapped, spawning the "Bring Back Our Girls" campaign. Most of them have not been found. Why have they been so incapable to do anything in the north?

ADOTEIAKWEI: There are a number of reasons. The first that almost everyone agrees on is that corruption has basically weakened the capacity of the military to operate. When Boko Haram seized Baga two weekends ago, the military ran out of ammunition, and then they had to flee. And that was a similar situation in other attacks on villages. So, there’s a capacity issue, which the Nigerian military acknowledges, but does not actually reveal the extent of which. The second, I think, is the morale issue.

AMYGOODMAN: We have 10 seconds.

ADOTEIAKWEI: Sure. The morale issue, I think, is reflective of some disquiet with the hard-line response that targets males in the region as if they were Boko Haram supporters until they prove themselves innocent. And I think the third is just a question of the actual tactics.

AMYGOODMAN: Adotei, we have to leave it there, Adotei Akwei with Amnesty International. Of course, we’ll continue to cover this issue.

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Tue, 13 Jan 2015 00:00:00 -0500Jeremy Scahill on Paris Attacks, the al-Qaeda Link & the Secret U.S. War in Yemenhttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/1/12/jeremy_scahill_on_paris_attacks_the
tag:democracynow.org,2015-01-12:en/story/cd358c AMY GOODMAN : Yes, a massive march across France, close to four million people, took place. That march took place two days after the gunmen who attacked Charlie Hebdo , the satirical magazine, Chérif and Said Kouachi, were killed by police after a siege at a printing works following a three-day manhunt. Minutes after the print shop assault, police broke a second siege at a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris. Four hostages had already died there, and the police killed the gunman, Amedy Coulibaly. France has announced it&#8217;s deployed 10,000 soldiers on home soil and posting almost 5,000 extra police officers to protect Jewish sites, some 700 Jewish schools.
On Friday, Chérif Kouachi said he received financing by the Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen. He had made the assertion on a television station before his death. Reuters is reporting both brothers who carried out the attack against Charlie Hebdo traveled to Yemen in 2011 and had weapons training in the deserts of Marib, an al-Qaeda stronghold. Meanwhile, a source within al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP , has provided the website The Intercept with a full statement claiming responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo attack. Jeremy Scahill was the source of information in this country about that.
Jeremy, talk about what we know about these attacks.
JEREMY SCAHILL : Well, I mean, first of all, there is a built-in motivation for a lot of different groups to try to take responsibility for these kinds of attacks, because there is a turf war going on between ISIS , the Islamic State; AQAP , al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula; old-school central al-Qaeda, which is a very different organization now than it was under bin Laden now that Ayman al-Zawahiri is in charge of it. France has been actually fighting its own war in Mali and elsewhere in Africa, using drone strikes and attacks and supporting the United States battling against al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. So, we have to take everything that all of these groups say about this, you know, with a great deal of skepticism.
But what is clear to me, both from the reporting that we&#8217;ve seen at other news outlets and also from my own sources, is that AQAP , at a minimum, had these brothers in a camp, a training camp in Yemen, provided them with training, discussed with them, I understand from sources inside of Yemen, the idea that they should be attacking media outlets that have published the image of the Prophet Muhammad, particularly those that have published the image of the Prophet Muhammad in a demeaning or what they consider to be a disgraceful manner.
You know, the context of this, Amy, is that in June of 2010, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula released its first issue of a glossy, very fancy, designed magazine in the English language called Inspire . And in that magazine, they had an image that was centered around the idea of a cartoon crusade. And they called on Muslims in the West to avenge the reputation and the sanctity of the Prophet Muhammad by going and killing cartoonists who were participating in a &quot;Draw Muhammad Day&quot;—and the show South Park on Comedy Central did a whole issue about this, where they mocked the Prophet Muhammad—and they actually published a list of cartoonists, some of the cartoonists, that had drawn the Prophet Muhammad in this manner, including a woman in Seattle, Washington, named Molly Norris. And she had to go underground and change her name and received federal protection from the FBI . And I think, to this day, she still is underground, believing that she remains on this hit list. So this was something that was a major campaign initiated by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. And my understanding is that these two brothers were doing this in concert, to some degree, with AQAP .
Now, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula officials have told me that &quot;We directed this attack.&quot; That&#8217;s very—
AMY GOODMAN : How did they get in touch with you?
JEREMY SCAHILL : I mean, I don&#8217;t want to discuss—as the CIA says, I don&#8217;t want to discuss sources and methods. But I will say this about the source. I&#8217;ve spent a lot of time in Yemen, including in areas controlled by al-Qaeda, and I would never just print something that I received from a random person whose identity I couldn&#8217;t verify. Also, this isn&#8217;t a source that just popped out of thin air for this story. This is—this source of this information is someone that in the past has given me information about what al-Qaeda was going to say or the fact that al-Qaeda was holding particular hostages before it was made public, as a way of validating that they in fact are—do have access to the highest levels of debate and discussion within the leadership of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
But I should say, just by way of context, well-placed sources within AQAP saying this is not an official statement from the leadership of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. And before we go sort of all in and say, &quot;Yeah, this is—this definitely was AQAP that directed this plot or financed this plot&quot;—the normal way that AQAP would validate this would be to release statements and audio or video recordings through their official media channels. They have their own online television station. They have their own way of releasing things on discussion boards. Over the past year, they&#8217;ve started to shift more to Twitter in terms of announcing—making pronouncements or announcing actions that they&#8217;ve taken, hostages that they&#8217;ve taken, assaults or raids inside of Yemen that they&#8217;ve conducted.
So, what I&#8217;m going to be looking for in the coming weeks is if there&#8217;s a martyr video that was filmed in Yemen by either of these brothers, or if AQAP is able to produce photographs of them at a training camp. That&#8217;s what happened when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up the airplane over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. After that happened, AQAP eventually took responsibility, and then they began to release media showing, &quot;Hey, this guy was with us in Yemen,&quot; and they actually released a martyr video where he, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, this young Nigerian man, explained what he was going to do and why he was going to do it. So, until that happens, I think that what we have here is a very reliable source, in terms of accuracy within AQAP , saying this, and now the U.S. is saying that they believe that—that their working assumption is that AQAP was involved.
AMY GOODMAN : Now, that, the underwear—the so-called underwear bomber, it&#8217;s just coming out now, actually shared a room in Beirut, Lebanon, with [Said Kouachi, one of the two gunmen involved in the Charlie Hebdo attack].
JEREMY SCAHILL : Well, I mean, my understanding is that both Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and at least one of these brothers spent time at Iman University in Sana&#8217;a, in Yemen. And that&#8217;s a university founded by a cleric named Zindani, who is a very, very famous radical Yemeni preacher. He denies that he has any ties to terrorism, but his message is definitely in sync, more or less, with groups like al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. And John Walker Lyndh, for instance, studied at that university. It definitely is a place where people go and then somehow find themselves going to training camps inside of Yemen. The idea that they would have been there at the same time, if in fact everything we understand to be true about these brothers is true, would not be surprising at all.
AMY GOODMAN : So, you were in Yemen. You were investigating the drone killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, as well as his son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was 16 years old, born in Denver. Talk about these connections that they&#8217;re talking about right now, the actual meeting that Awlaki had with one of the brothers.
JEREMY SCAHILL : Allegedly, yeah. Well, and first of all, just to give context on who is Anwar al-Awlaki, you know, The New York Times had a front-page piece on this over the weekend. The Washington Post had a big piece on it. CNN is now running this big profile of Anwar al-Awlaki. And a lot of what is being said about Anwar al-Awlaki in the media is sort of what Stephen Colbert called &quot;truthiness,&quot; you know, where like it&#8217;s sort of true, they&#8217;re kind of getting it right, but there are tremendous factual inaccuracies that actually are very relevant to understanding any potential role played by Anwar al-Awlaki here.
First of all, Anwar al-Awlaki was an American citizen who was born in the United States. His father was a very well-respected—is, still alive—very well-respected Yemeni diplomat and scholar, who got his master&#8217;s degree in the United States and had intended to live in the U.S. And then the family went back—
AMY GOODMAN : He was a Fulbright scholar.
JEREMY SCAHILL : He was a Fulbright scholar. And he also—he had multiple master&#8217;s degrees in the United States, and remains a very dignified, respected member of Yemeni society. And—
AMY GOODMAN : Anwar al-Awlaki&#8217;s father.
JEREMY SCAHILL : This is his father, Dr. Nasser al-Awlaki. And so, the family is here for some years. Then Nasser al-Awlaki goes back to Yemen, because he was a water specialist, an engineer, and tried to help deal with the crisis of water shortage in Yemen, which is perhaps the greatest threat facing Yemeni society right now, not terrorism, but its lack of actual potable water. So the family moved back there. Anwar al-Awlaki was young. He goes to school there at a bilingual school with the elite of the elite in Yemen. In fact, he went to school with the future head of Yemen&#8217;s intelligence agency, who would be one of the main collaborators with the United States in trying to hunt down and kill Anwar al-Awlaki in a drone strike.
Awlaki then returns to the United States, goes to university in Colorado, was not a particularly religious guy, becomes sort of radicalized by the Gulf War in 1991, when George H.W. Bush ordered the invasion and bombing of Iraq in response to Saddam Hussein&#8217;s incursion into Kuwait. And al-Awlaki starts to become involved with antiwar activities, ends up going to a local mosque on an invitation to speak there and becomes interested in the idea of actually becoming a religious scholar and studying to be an imam. And so his life takes a dramatic shift, and he ends up becoming an imam.
He and his family—at this point, he gets married. He&#8217;s in San Diego. Two of the 9/11 hijackers were people that had been at his mosque. The 9/11 Commission determined that Awlaki didn&#8217;t have any sort of conversations with them beyond clerical conversations that like a priest would have with a parishioner somewhere in the Catholic Church, but nonetheless that&#8217;s something that keeps being brought up, that Awlaki had connections to the 9/11 attackers. If we want to talk about that and say that that&#8217;s evidence of something, we should also mention that at a time when 9/11 attackers were going to mosques where Awlaki was the imam, Awlaki was also invited by the Pentagon, shortly after 9/11, to give a lecture at a luncheon at the Pentagon. And he in fact went to the Pentagon, at the invitation of a senior Pentagon official, and gave a lecture about the state of Islam in the world today.
Awlaki was clearly angered by the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He defended the right of the United States to go into Afghanistan to destroy al-Qaeda and denounced al-Qaeda as fake Muslims. This was all in the aftermath of 9/11. He was on NPR . He was profiled in The Washington Post . He was considered a legitimate part of the commentariat in the United States post-9/11, as a person who was brought on TV shows to make sense of the position of Muslims in the world post-9/11. And part of the reason he was invited on these media outlets is because he was condemning al-Qaeda. He was condemning the invasion of—or, excuse me, he was condemning the use of Afghanistan as a base to plot the 9/11 attacks.
Then Iraq gets invaded. Then Abu Ghraib happens. Then we start to learn about CIA torture sites around the world. We start to see Muslim prisoners in orange jumpsuits with hoods being brought. Then there&#8217;s desecration of the Qur&#8217;an that happens. And you could see Awlaki becoming radicalized by these policies. And he goes back to Yemen, and basically didn&#8217;t know what he was doing with his life. He got involved with some real estate and other things. Then he starts—he basically starts using YouTube and the Internet as his online mosque. He already was known around the world for sermons he had recorded on CDs.
And part of the reason he became so popular in the Western world is because not only was he fluent in both English and Arabic, but he spoke in the language of the street. He would make pop cultural references. He would sort of mimic the way that Malcolm X spoke, in terms of his riffs and other things. He would make references to international football teams and matches, and make comparisons with—you know, when you&#8217;re trying to spread the religion, you don&#8217;t wait to show up like the post office, you want to go at it like FedEx. And he would sort of—you know, he was a guy who, I think, has an appeal to particularly younger Western Muslims.
And, you know, I listened to many, many, many, many days&#8217; worth of Anwar al-Awlaki&#8217;s preaching. And up until the invasion of Iraq, there was very little that you could look at and say, &quot;Oh, here&#8217;s a guy who is going to be very anti-American.&quot; In fact, Awlaki supported the war in Yugoslavia. He was on the same side as the United States in Bosnia. And, in fact, you know, Awlaki was calling for Muslims in the United States to fight the jihad against the Catholic forces of Croatia and the Orthodox Christian forces of Serbia, and he was on the same side as the United States. The U.S. was raising funds to arm Bosnian Muslims to fight in that war. They were on the—the U.S. was on the same side as Anwar al-Awlaki and Osama bin Laden in the war in Yugoslavia in terms of the position that they staked out on Bosnia.
Once Awlaki starts, though, preaching against the U.S. wars and saying that Muslims have a right to fight the jihad against the United States, he became a public enemy, similar to what the U.S. did with Saddam Hussein. When he&#8217;s our guy doing our kind of repression, we want him. But if he crosses that line and affects U.S. or international oil interests, he&#8217;s now tantamount to Hitler. That&#8217;s similar to what happened with Awlaki. The U.S. then has Awlaki put in prison inside of Yemen for 18 months, where he was held in solitary confinement for 17 of those months. He was interrogated by the FBI while in that prison. And then, when he was released, he was a totally changed man.
AMY GOODMAN : Where was he held?
JEREMY SCAHILL : He was held in a political prison inside of Yemen, in Sana&#8217;a, Yemen. And, in fact, I reported in my book that when the Yemeni government wanted to release Awlaki, that John Negroponte, who at the time was a senior counterterrorism official under the Bush administration—and, of course, one of the butchers of Central America during the 1980s—John Negroponte had a secret meeting with Bandar Bush, the Saudi diplomat very close to the Bush family, where he—and the Yemeni ambassador, where John Negroponte said, &quot;Our position is that we want Awlaki kept in prison until all of these young Western Muslims forget about him.&quot; This is a U.S. citizen who was being held in a prison in a human rights-violating country on very flimsy charges that he had intervened in a tribal dispute, and a senior official intervenes to say, &quot;We want our citizen kept in your prison without any trial for five years, until people forget about him.&quot;
When Awlaki eventually was released, he was a totally changed man and began increasingly to cross the line from praising people fighting against the United States, in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, to actively calling on people to come and, as he put it, fight on the fronts of jihad in Yemen or elsewhere or in your own country. And this is where he really became considered to be a significant threat by the United States, that his words—not his actions, but his words—were going to inspire lone-wolf acts of terrorism inside of the United States.
And when he really rose to international prominence was in November of 2009, when Army Major Nidal Hasan, who was a U.S. military psychiatrist that had petitioned to try to have some of his patients prosecuted for war crimes after they described to him what they had done in Afghanistan and elsewhere, he—Hasan had written—
AMY GOODMAN : This is at Fort Hood.
JEREMY SCAHILL : This is at Fort Hood, Texas. Nidal Hasan had written to Anwar al-Awlaki a number of times, praising Awlaki, offering to give Awlaki like a human rights prize of $5,000. Awlaki writes back to him and says, &quot;Give it to the orphans and widows.&quot; Awlaki basically was treating Hasan like kind of a disturbed character. But if you read media accounts today about Anwar al-Awlaki, they say he directed the Fort Hood attack. The declassified emails, that the U.S. government has declassified, between Anwar al-Awlaki and Nidal Hasan do not show that at all. In fact, they show Nidal Hasan as sort of an unstable stalker who&#8217;s trying to get Awlaki to like him, and Awlaki is sort of dismissing him.
Now, was Nidal Hasan inspired by Anwar al-Awlaki&#8217;s preaching and teaching to do what he did at Fort Hood? Absolutely, no question whatsoever. Anwar al-Awlaki was clearly saying—and Awlaki, in the aftermath, praised it and said, &quot;What Nidal Hasan did was right, but I didn&#8217;t tell him to do it.&quot; And Awlaki was not a guy who wouldn&#8217;t claim responsibility for things that he actually did. He admitted that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was one of his students. Now, that could mean something very serious. It could mean that he was a student, and he said, &quot;Hey, to do something like AQAP wants you to do, to try to blow up this airplane, is acceptable under Islam, because they&#8217;re attacking us, and under these codes of the Sharia, it&#8217;s fine to do.&quot;
But to say someone directed a plot, in the case of the underwear bomber or in the case of Fort Hood, that&#8217;s just not proven. And if we want to say that we live in a society based on the rule of law, if there&#8217;s all this evidence that Awlaki was operational within al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, why did the United States never charge him with a crime? If I were a prosecutor, I would have tried to indict Anwar al-Awlaki for directly threatening the life of this American cartoonist in Seattle. Why was he never indicted? We indicted Osama bin Laden. We indicted John Walker Lindh. Why would they not indict Awlaki? If all of this evidence that The New York Times and The Washington Post and CNN now today claim that the U.S. has had for a long time, why was there never an indictment on Anwar al-Awlaki? What did the president of the United States serve as judge, jury and executioner of an American citizen? Why did the United States advocate for a human rights-abusing government to have one of their citizens placed in prison for indefinite detention, when he hadn&#8217;t yet been charged with a crime by the United States?
AMY GOODMAN : Well, what&#8217;s the answer?
JEREMY SCAHILL : Well, I think that the U.S., on the one hand, was afraid of Awlaki&#8217;s words. They didn&#8217;t want to give him a platform in a trial. I think they also wanted to continue to be able to monitor him to see who he was working with and who he was meeting with. And I ultimately think that they—that the calculus was, if we were to capture this American citizen, this is not the same as putting Osama bin Laden on trial, this is not the same as putting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on trial. This is an American citizen who speaks very articulate, fluent English and would probably have an incredible defense team. So I think part of it was that they never wanted him to see a day in court.
Now, I found Awlaki&#8217;s words and his involvement with a number of people who went on to commit acts of terrorism or mass violence reprehensible. That&#8217;s not the point here. The point is, if you&#8217;re going to make these allegations, you better be able to prove it. So, if Awlaki did in fact meet with either or both of the Paris shooters, that&#8217;s a relevant part of the story, but what I know from my reporting on the ground about the underwear bomber is that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a deranged young man, and AQAP wanted to make sure that he followed through on his plot. And my understanding is that they brought Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to Anwar al-Awlaki to essentially either groom him or to act as a sort of Islamic therapist who was sort of trying to get his mental health back up so that AQAP could do what they wanted to do with him. That&#8217;s my understanding of the role Awlaki played with AQAP , is that he was a guy who would help facilitate these people going to AQAP , but not that Awlaki was picking the targets or running the show.
AMY GOODMAN : We have to break. When we come back, we&#8217;re going to talk more about Chérif and Said Kouachi, about Amedy Coulibaly. Now, the French government and governments around the world are looking for Hayat Boumeddiene, the woman who they say was related to Amedy Coulibaly, not clear exactly what her role has been. They say she left France, went through Turkey, possibly is in Syria. And the person who has fallen off the map is the 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad. The day of the attack on the satirical magazine, on Charlie Hebdo , they said that he was driving the car. But he turned himself in and said, &quot;I was in class,&quot; and many of his classmates tweeted this same fact. We haven&#8217;t heard about him again. This is Democracy Now! We&#8217;ll be back in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . I&#8217;m Amy Goodman. The winter 2014 issue of Inspire , the English-language magazine of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, features an image of a Muslim man praying next to a pressure cooker, above an image of a French passport. The image is accompanied by text that reads, quote, &quot;If you have the knowledge and inspiration all that&#8217;s left is to take action.&quot; Last spring, Inspire magazine published a &quot;wanted&quot; poster showing the name and photograph of Charlie Hebdo editor Stéphane Charbonnier, who was killed in last week&#8217;s attack.
Our guest for the hour is Jeremy Scahill, who is co-founder of The Intercept , where his most recent article is &quot;Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula Directed Paris Attack,&quot; according to an al-Qaeda source. His latest book, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield . His film, nominated for an Academy Award, by the same title, Dirty Wars .
OK, Jeremy, if you can talk about, first of all, that latest Inspire magazine and what we know about the relationship between these attackers in France, who killed 17 people, and their relationship with AQAP ? And also, where does ISIS fit into this?
JEREMY SCAHILL : Right, well, let&#8217;s take that on first about ISIS . You know, the man who did the siege at the kosher market released this martyr video that he recorded after the Charlie Hebdo offices were attacked by the two brothers. And it was like a hastily put together thing, where he put a picture of an Islamic flag on the wall behind him, and he did some exercises in front of it, and then he pledged his allegiance to Baghdadi, you know, and the caliphate trying to be established by the Islamic State. I wouldn&#8217;t read too deeply into his role with the Islamic State. It&#8217;s possible that there was, that he had gone and had some participation with members of the Islamic State. It&#8217;s also more likely that he was inspired by this and was trying to basically project an image that he was part of a bigger effort around the world to avenge the honor of the Prophet Muhammad and that, you know, this was sort of his last stand and that he was going to be a martyr. But, you know, the—
AMY GOODMAN : I want to go—
JEREMY SCAHILL : Yeah, go ahead.
AMY GOODMAN : —to the French media outlets, you know, broadcasting extracts of this video, reportedly to be Amedy Coulibaly. He said he had synchronized the attacks in Paris with the Kouachi brothers and that he was in allegiance with the Islamic State.
AMEDY COULIBALY : [translated] You attack the caliphate. You attack the Islamic State. We are attacking you. One cannot attack and get nothing in return. So you&#8217;re playing the victim as if you don&#8217;t understand what was happening for some deaths, while you and your coalition, you heading it, you regularly bombard over there. You have sent forces. You are killing civilians. You are killing fighters. You are killing.
AMY GOODMAN : That&#8217;s Amedy Coulibaly, apparently, and not clear even who he made this video with, if he make it with someone else, which brings in this—the woman who they originally said was in the kosher supermarket with him, and perhaps had killed the French policewoman the day before. But it turns out they now say she had left like January 1st or January 2nd. They say she might be his girlfriend, his common-law wife, and may have made her way through Turkey to Syria.
JEREMY SCAHILL : Yeah, and, I mean, I&#8217;m—I think we all need to be very careful in speculating about—you know, in the immediate aftermath of things like this, they go and they sweep up all sorts of people, and they make allegations that these individuals may be tied to it. And we heard—I mean, if you watch in the minutes after this happened, you start to hear that there are other attacks that may be underway and that there is going to be multiple cells that are going to be attacking Paris tonight and that they&#8217;re looking at this network of people around them. I mean, that&#8217;s what happens in the aftermath of shootings like this. They scramble to try to find anyone connected to the individuals that they know were involved, you know, and in this case you had three people that they definitely knew were involved with tremendous acts of violence and mass murder. And, you know, a lot of people get swept up in that net.
So, what her potential role in this is, we don&#8217;t know. I mean, they&#8217;re putting a lot of scary images of her on television, showing her with a crossbow pointed at a camera and showing images of her with some of the suspects in this case. I don&#8217;t think we know enough yet. I mean, my understanding is that the—
AMY GOODMAN : And she&#8217;s totally covered there; you don&#8217;t even know if it&#8217;s her.
JEREMY SCAHILL : Right. I mean, it could be anyone. And the—but that the intelligence that they have about her whereabouts is largely from signals intelligence and tracking the position of a phone that she apparently, until a few days ago, still had on her.
AMY GOODMAN : And Turkey saying that she had come through.
JEREMY SCAHILL : Yeah, Turkey, and they&#8217;re saying that maybe she&#8217;s already in Syria. But again, all that is speculation. And, you know, the scaremongering machine is in full effect. It&#8217;s not to say that there aren&#8217;t scary people on the run or that there aren&#8217;t potentially dangerous people on the run. But if you watch, as I know you do, like if you watched big corporate media coverage over the weekend, it&#8217;s Fear, Inc., you know, and they&#8217;re just revving up the fear engine again. This is a serious incident. People need to be brought to justice for this. Anyone involved with it does. But, like, the fear is counterproductive. France deploying 10,000 soldiers on the streets of its city, I mean, this is—the state will always look for a reason to overreact and to sweep up civil liberties. That&#8217;s what we saw in this country after 9/11. We&#8217;ve never been able to roll it back. That&#8217;s exactly what&#8217;s happening in France right now.
AMY GOODMAN : How do they prepare for future attacks?
JEREMY SCAHILL : Well, I mean, the discussion you would hear on big corporate television about that is going to be about how do we defend our society, how do we integrate these networks, how do we do surveillance on these people. You know, this is probably going to be an unpopular thing to say, but I&#8217;ll say it because I believe it: The only way I think we&#8217;re ever going to effectively be able to confront this kind of terrorism is to take away the justification or the motivation of people who are not already sort of committed radical individuals who believe that what they&#8217;re doing is justified and they&#8217;re not afraid to die.
You know, the Taliban fighters always say, you know, &quot;We love death as much as you love life.&quot; But a lot of these people who do these attacks, something happened in their life somewhere—similar to what happens with school shootings here, you know, what happened at Columbine. I liken a lot of these guys to people who go through some kind of period where they&#8217;re lost in life, and then they&#8217;re falling. Who catches you when you fall? A lot of times in a society that&#8217;s been decimated, a religion that&#8217;s been humiliated, people are looking for some kind of greater meaning, and there are a lot of people willing to take advantage of them.
But in a broader sense, what we&#8217;ve done since 9/11, and actually going back well before 9/11, with the unquestioning support for Israel, with the drone bombing campaigns, with the invasions and occupations of countries, with the torture of prisoners around the world, we have projected a message that we are at war with a religion. When Rupert Murdoch, the most powerful media figure in the world, goes on Twitter and uses the word &quot;Moslem,&quot; but says that basically all Muslims are to blame for this until they stop it, that&#8217;s not lost on people around the world. And Bush used the word &quot;crusade&quot; in the early stages of the post-9/11 aftermath. So, I&#8217;m not saying that any of this is justified as a result of U.S. policy. But if we really want to confront this, we have to understand our own role in legitimizing it.
AMY GOODMAN : It was interesting to see Hollande in the middle of the line of world leaders, and on one side of him, just a few leaders down, is Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and on the other side, the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas.
JEREMY SCAHILL : Right. Well, Netanyahu, one of the biggest war criminals in the world for his—what he&#8217;s doing in Palestine. I mean, it&#8217;s shocking that someone like him is accepted as like someone who has any business being in a march about defense, freedoms or human rights.
AMY GOODMAN : So, let&#8217;s talk about the connection between ISIS and AQAP . Is there competition? Are they joining together? And to get out there, as we get to the end of this hour, even Boko Haram, I wanted to ask if you see any possible—even if they don&#8217;t start out linked—I mean, what hasn&#8217;t even been covered in the last week, the possibility that Boko Haram in Nigeria, where we have both reported, killed possibly 2,000 people.
JEREMY SCAHILL : Yeah. I mean, these are heinous, heinous criminals, Boko Haram. But also, you know, just not to get inside baseball about Nigerian politics, but how is it that the Nigerian state—Nigeria has the most powerful military in Africa, is deployed around Africa in so-called humanitarian missions. How is it that the Nigerian military is not able to confront Boko Haram in any effective way? I&#8217;m not alleging there&#8217;s a conspiracy here, but I guarantee you that very powerful individuals in Nigeria are allowing this to happen or looking the other way, similar to what happens with the Saudi royals with acts of terrorism around the world, where, on the one hand, they say, &quot;Oh, we&#8217;re with America, and we denounce this,&quot; on the other hand, their cousin is one of the major funders of it.
You know, to answer your question—and we only have a little bit of time left—about ISIS , AQAP , Boko Haram, al-Shabab and others, those groups are all united in a very generic sense of perceiving that there is a world war against Islam and that they&#8217;re going to fight all of the nonbelievers, and that they&#8217;re not just going to defend themselves, but they&#8217;re also going to actively promote and project their interpretation of Islam on the world. On a micro level, the Islamic State and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula are fighting a turf war, and AQAP is aligned with other al-Qaeda-affiliated organizations throughout East Africa, North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and a few other spots around the world. They&#8217;re battling for funds from the diaspora. They&#8217;re battling for supremacy. It&#8217;s not an active military battle right now. It&#8217;s largely a propaganda battle waged on Twitter and social media and through official pronouncements.
But at the end of the day, as the AQAP source told me, &quot;It doesn&#8217;t matter to us who did the shooting at the kosher market or if he was working with another group; what matters to us is that he did it, and that he was a Muslim, and that he declared that he was avenging the Prophet Muhammad. And that&#8217;s more important to us than who directed this.&quot; That, I think, is probably a widely shared sentiment across a number of these groups, many of which have issued statements praising it, but stopping short of saying, &quot;Hey, we did this.&quot;
AMY GOODMAN : Will there be an intensification of the drone strikes in Yemen now?
JEREMY SCAHILL : Yes. I mean, there already has been in recent weeks. And let&#8217;s remember, too, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, if they are behind this—
AMY GOODMAN : We have one minute.
JEREMY SCAHILL : —this would be their deadliest external attack that they&#8217;ve been able to orchestrate or sort of plot or be involved with, you know, since Obama started bombing Yemen and since the creation of the group. And they&#8217;ve had a number of failed attempts. The vast majority of people who have died at the hands of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula are Yemenis and are other Muslims. But we don&#8217;t talk about that. The day the French shooting happened, AQAP attacked a police academy and killed 30 people in Sana&#8217;a. It wasn&#8217;t even a blip on the radar of media coverage. You know, and so, when we look at the future of what Obama is going to do there, if they go after them, they&#8217;ll go after them for this. They won&#8217;t go after them for killing other Yemenis or troops that are actually being funded by the United States inside of Yemen. It&#8217;s only when they scare us in our own languages or in our own societies, and the response is often disproportionate and ends up killing a lot of innocent people.
AMY GOODMAN : Do you think ISIS and AQAP are coming together?
JEREMY SCAHILL : No, I don&#8217;t. I don&#8217;t think they are, but I think they&#8217;re both happy that this happened.
AMY GOODMAN : And who do you think these three brothers—the two brothers and Coulibaly thought they were working for?
JEREMY SCAHILL : Well, we have their own words. They said that they were doing it on behalf of al-Qaeda in Yemen. They claim that they were financed by Anwar al-Awlaki, who was close to al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda is telling me that they played a role in this, al-Qaeda in Yemen. I think until there&#8217;s an official statement, we won&#8217;t know. But for now, I think we should take seriously what they&#8217;re saying, but also in the context that a lot of people have an agenda to say, &quot;Hey, we were behind this,&quot; and those brothers had an agenda to say, &quot;We are operating as part of a bigger network,&quot; because it helps in propaganda.
AMY GOODMAN : Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of the The Intercept . His recent article , we&#8217;ll link to at democracynow.org. His latest book, Dirty Wars . AMYGOODMAN: Yes, a massive march across France, close to four million people, took place. That march took place two days after the gunmen who attacked Charlie Hebdo, the satirical magazine, Chérif and Said Kouachi, were killed by police after a siege at a printing works following a three-day manhunt. Minutes after the print shop assault, police broke a second siege at a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris. Four hostages had already died there, and the police killed the gunman, Amedy Coulibaly. France has announced it’s deployed 10,000 soldiers on home soil and posting almost 5,000 extra police officers to protect Jewish sites, some 700 Jewish schools.

On Friday, Chérif Kouachi said he received financing by the Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen. He had made the assertion on a television station before his death. Reuters is reporting both brothers who carried out the attack against Charlie Hebdo traveled to Yemen in 2011 and had weapons training in the deserts of Marib, an al-Qaeda stronghold. Meanwhile, a source within al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, has provided the website The Intercept with a full statement claiming responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo attack. Jeremy Scahill was the source of information in this country about that.

Jeremy, talk about what we know about these attacks.

JEREMYSCAHILL: Well, I mean, first of all, there is a built-in motivation for a lot of different groups to try to take responsibility for these kinds of attacks, because there is a turf war going on between ISIS, the Islamic State; AQAP, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula; old-school central al-Qaeda, which is a very different organization now than it was under bin Laden now that Ayman al-Zawahiri is in charge of it. France has been actually fighting its own war in Mali and elsewhere in Africa, using drone strikes and attacks and supporting the United States battling against al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. So, we have to take everything that all of these groups say about this, you know, with a great deal of skepticism.

But what is clear to me, both from the reporting that we’ve seen at other news outlets and also from my own sources, is that AQAP, at a minimum, had these brothers in a camp, a training camp in Yemen, provided them with training, discussed with them, I understand from sources inside of Yemen, the idea that they should be attacking media outlets that have published the image of the Prophet Muhammad, particularly those that have published the image of the Prophet Muhammad in a demeaning or what they consider to be a disgraceful manner.

You know, the context of this, Amy, is that in June of 2010, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula released its first issue of a glossy, very fancy, designed magazine in the English language called Inspire. And in that magazine, they had an image that was centered around the idea of a cartoon crusade. And they called on Muslims in the West to avenge the reputation and the sanctity of the Prophet Muhammad by going and killing cartoonists who were participating in a "Draw Muhammad Day"—and the show South Park on Comedy Central did a whole issue about this, where they mocked the Prophet Muhammad—and they actually published a list of cartoonists, some of the cartoonists, that had drawn the Prophet Muhammad in this manner, including a woman in Seattle, Washington, named Molly Norris. And she had to go underground and change her name and received federal protection from the FBI. And I think, to this day, she still is underground, believing that she remains on this hit list. So this was something that was a major campaign initiated by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. And my understanding is that these two brothers were doing this in concert, to some degree, with AQAP.

JEREMYSCAHILL: I mean, I don’t want to discuss—as the CIA says, I don’t want to discuss sources and methods. But I will say this about the source. I’ve spent a lot of time in Yemen, including in areas controlled by al-Qaeda, and I would never just print something that I received from a random person whose identity I couldn’t verify. Also, this isn’t a source that just popped out of thin air for this story. This is—this source of this information is someone that in the past has given me information about what al-Qaeda was going to say or the fact that al-Qaeda was holding particular hostages before it was made public, as a way of validating that they in fact are—do have access to the highest levels of debate and discussion within the leadership of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

But I should say, just by way of context, well-placed sources within AQAP saying this is not an official statement from the leadership of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. And before we go sort of all in and say, "Yeah, this is—this definitely was AQAP that directed this plot or financed this plot"—the normal way that AQAP would validate this would be to release statements and audio or video recordings through their official media channels. They have their own online television station. They have their own way of releasing things on discussion boards. Over the past year, they’ve started to shift more to Twitter in terms of announcing—making pronouncements or announcing actions that they’ve taken, hostages that they’ve taken, assaults or raids inside of Yemen that they’ve conducted.

So, what I’m going to be looking for in the coming weeks is if there’s a martyr video that was filmed in Yemen by either of these brothers, or if AQAP is able to produce photographs of them at a training camp. That’s what happened when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up the airplane over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. After that happened, AQAP eventually took responsibility, and then they began to release media showing, "Hey, this guy was with us in Yemen," and they actually released a martyr video where he, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, this young Nigerian man, explained what he was going to do and why he was going to do it. So, until that happens, I think that what we have here is a very reliable source, in terms of accuracy within AQAP, saying this, and now the U.S. is saying that they believe that—that their working assumption is that AQAP was involved.

AMYGOODMAN: Now, that, the underwear—the so-called underwear bomber, it’s just coming out now, actually shared a room in Beirut, Lebanon, with [Said Kouachi, one of the two gunmen involved in the Charlie Hebdo attack].

JEREMYSCAHILL: Well, I mean, my understanding is that both Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and at least one of these brothers spent time at Iman University in Sana’a, in Yemen. And that’s a university founded by a cleric named Zindani, who is a very, very famous radical Yemeni preacher. He denies that he has any ties to terrorism, but his message is definitely in sync, more or less, with groups like al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. And John Walker Lyndh, for instance, studied at that university. It definitely is a place where people go and then somehow find themselves going to training camps inside of Yemen. The idea that they would have been there at the same time, if in fact everything we understand to be true about these brothers is true, would not be surprising at all.

AMYGOODMAN: So, you were in Yemen. You were investigating the drone killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, as well as his son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was 16 years old, born in Denver. Talk about these connections that they’re talking about right now, the actual meeting that Awlaki had with one of the brothers.

JEREMYSCAHILL: Allegedly, yeah. Well, and first of all, just to give context on who is Anwar al-Awlaki, you know, The New York Times had a front-page piece on this over the weekend. The Washington Post had a big piece on it. CNN is now running this big profile of Anwar al-Awlaki. And a lot of what is being said about Anwar al-Awlaki in the media is sort of what Stephen Colbert called "truthiness," you know, where like it’s sort of true, they’re kind of getting it right, but there are tremendous factual inaccuracies that actually are very relevant to understanding any potential role played by Anwar al-Awlaki here.

First of all, Anwar al-Awlaki was an American citizen who was born in the United States. His father was a very well-respected—is, still alive—very well-respected Yemeni diplomat and scholar, who got his master’s degree in the United States and had intended to live in the U.S. And then the family went back—

AMYGOODMAN: He was a Fulbright scholar.

JEREMYSCAHILL: He was a Fulbright scholar. And he also—he had multiple master’s degrees in the United States, and remains a very dignified, respected member of Yemeni society. And—

AMYGOODMAN: Anwar al-Awlaki’s father.

JEREMYSCAHILL: This is his father, Dr. Nasser al-Awlaki. And so, the family is here for some years. Then Nasser al-Awlaki goes back to Yemen, because he was a water specialist, an engineer, and tried to help deal with the crisis of water shortage in Yemen, which is perhaps the greatest threat facing Yemeni society right now, not terrorism, but its lack of actual potable water. So the family moved back there. Anwar al-Awlaki was young. He goes to school there at a bilingual school with the elite of the elite in Yemen. In fact, he went to school with the future head of Yemen’s intelligence agency, who would be one of the main collaborators with the United States in trying to hunt down and kill Anwar al-Awlaki in a drone strike.

Awlaki then returns to the United States, goes to university in Colorado, was not a particularly religious guy, becomes sort of radicalized by the Gulf War in 1991, when George H.W. Bush ordered the invasion and bombing of Iraq in response to Saddam Hussein’s incursion into Kuwait. And al-Awlaki starts to become involved with antiwar activities, ends up going to a local mosque on an invitation to speak there and becomes interested in the idea of actually becoming a religious scholar and studying to be an imam. And so his life takes a dramatic shift, and he ends up becoming an imam.

He and his family—at this point, he gets married. He’s in San Diego. Two of the 9/11 hijackers were people that had been at his mosque. The 9/11 Commission determined that Awlaki didn’t have any sort of conversations with them beyond clerical conversations that like a priest would have with a parishioner somewhere in the Catholic Church, but nonetheless that’s something that keeps being brought up, that Awlaki had connections to the 9/11 attackers. If we want to talk about that and say that that’s evidence of something, we should also mention that at a time when 9/11 attackers were going to mosques where Awlaki was the imam, Awlaki was also invited by the Pentagon, shortly after 9/11, to give a lecture at a luncheon at the Pentagon. And he in fact went to the Pentagon, at the invitation of a senior Pentagon official, and gave a lecture about the state of Islam in the world today.

Awlaki was clearly angered by the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He defended the right of the United States to go into Afghanistan to destroy al-Qaeda and denounced al-Qaeda as fake Muslims. This was all in the aftermath of 9/11. He was on NPR. He was profiled in The Washington Post. He was considered a legitimate part of the commentariat in the United States post-9/11, as a person who was brought on TV shows to make sense of the position of Muslims in the world post-9/11. And part of the reason he was invited on these media outlets is because he was condemning al-Qaeda. He was condemning the invasion of—or, excuse me, he was condemning the use of Afghanistan as a base to plot the 9/11 attacks.

Then Iraq gets invaded. Then Abu Ghraib happens. Then we start to learn about CIA torture sites around the world. We start to see Muslim prisoners in orange jumpsuits with hoods being brought. Then there’s desecration of the Qur’an that happens. And you could see Awlaki becoming radicalized by these policies. And he goes back to Yemen, and basically didn’t know what he was doing with his life. He got involved with some real estate and other things. Then he starts—he basically starts using YouTube and the Internet as his online mosque. He already was known around the world for sermons he had recorded on CDs.

And part of the reason he became so popular in the Western world is because not only was he fluent in both English and Arabic, but he spoke in the language of the street. He would make pop cultural references. He would sort of mimic the way that Malcolm X spoke, in terms of his riffs and other things. He would make references to international football teams and matches, and make comparisons with—you know, when you’re trying to spread the religion, you don’t wait to show up like the post office, you want to go at it like FedEx. And he would sort of—you know, he was a guy who, I think, has an appeal to particularly younger Western Muslims.

And, you know, I listened to many, many, many, many days’ worth of Anwar al-Awlaki’s preaching. And up until the invasion of Iraq, there was very little that you could look at and say, "Oh, here’s a guy who is going to be very anti-American." In fact, Awlaki supported the war in Yugoslavia. He was on the same side as the United States in Bosnia. And, in fact, you know, Awlaki was calling for Muslims in the United States to fight the jihad against the Catholic forces of Croatia and the Orthodox Christian forces of Serbia, and he was on the same side as the United States. The U.S. was raising funds to arm Bosnian Muslims to fight in that war. They were on the—the U.S. was on the same side as Anwar al-Awlaki and Osama bin Laden in the war in Yugoslavia in terms of the position that they staked out on Bosnia.

Once Awlaki starts, though, preaching against the U.S. wars and saying that Muslims have a right to fight the jihad against the United States, he became a public enemy, similar to what the U.S. did with Saddam Hussein. When he’s our guy doing our kind of repression, we want him. But if he crosses that line and affects U.S. or international oil interests, he’s now tantamount to Hitler. That’s similar to what happened with Awlaki. The U.S. then has Awlaki put in prison inside of Yemen for 18 months, where he was held in solitary confinement for 17 of those months. He was interrogated by the FBI while in that prison. And then, when he was released, he was a totally changed man.

AMYGOODMAN: Where was he held?

JEREMYSCAHILL: He was held in a political prison inside of Yemen, in Sana’a, Yemen. And, in fact, I reported in my book that when the Yemeni government wanted to release Awlaki, that John Negroponte, who at the time was a senior counterterrorism official under the Bush administration—and, of course, one of the butchers of Central America during the 1980s—John Negroponte had a secret meeting with Bandar Bush, the Saudi diplomat very close to the Bush family, where he—and the Yemeni ambassador, where John Negroponte said, "Our position is that we want Awlaki kept in prison until all of these young Western Muslims forget about him." This is a U.S. citizen who was being held in a prison in a human rights-violating country on very flimsy charges that he had intervened in a tribal dispute, and a senior official intervenes to say, "We want our citizen kept in your prison without any trial for five years, until people forget about him."

When Awlaki eventually was released, he was a totally changed man and began increasingly to cross the line from praising people fighting against the United States, in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, to actively calling on people to come and, as he put it, fight on the fronts of jihad in Yemen or elsewhere or in your own country. And this is where he really became considered to be a significant threat by the United States, that his words—not his actions, but his words—were going to inspire lone-wolf acts of terrorism inside of the United States.

And when he really rose to international prominence was in November of 2009, when Army Major Nidal Hasan, who was a U.S. military psychiatrist that had petitioned to try to have some of his patients prosecuted for war crimes after they described to him what they had done in Afghanistan and elsewhere, he—Hasan had written—

AMYGOODMAN: This is at Fort Hood.

JEREMYSCAHILL: This is at Fort Hood, Texas. Nidal Hasan had written to Anwar al-Awlaki a number of times, praising Awlaki, offering to give Awlaki like a human rights prize of $5,000. Awlaki writes back to him and says, "Give it to the orphans and widows." Awlaki basically was treating Hasan like kind of a disturbed character. But if you read media accounts today about Anwar al-Awlaki, they say he directed the Fort Hood attack. The declassified emails, that the U.S. government has declassified, between Anwar al-Awlaki and Nidal Hasan do not show that at all. In fact, they show Nidal Hasan as sort of an unstable stalker who’s trying to get Awlaki to like him, and Awlaki is sort of dismissing him.

Now, was Nidal Hasan inspired by Anwar al-Awlaki’s preaching and teaching to do what he did at Fort Hood? Absolutely, no question whatsoever. Anwar al-Awlaki was clearly saying—and Awlaki, in the aftermath, praised it and said, "What Nidal Hasan did was right, but I didn’t tell him to do it." And Awlaki was not a guy who wouldn’t claim responsibility for things that he actually did. He admitted that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was one of his students. Now, that could mean something very serious. It could mean that he was a student, and he said, "Hey, to do something like AQAP wants you to do, to try to blow up this airplane, is acceptable under Islam, because they’re attacking us, and under these codes of the Sharia, it’s fine to do."

But to say someone directed a plot, in the case of the underwear bomber or in the case of Fort Hood, that’s just not proven. And if we want to say that we live in a society based on the rule of law, if there’s all this evidence that Awlaki was operational within al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, why did the United States never charge him with a crime? If I were a prosecutor, I would have tried to indict Anwar al-Awlaki for directly threatening the life of this American cartoonist in Seattle. Why was he never indicted? We indicted Osama bin Laden. We indicted John Walker Lindh. Why would they not indict Awlaki? If all of this evidence that The New York Times and The Washington Post and CNN now today claim that the U.S. has had for a long time, why was there never an indictment on Anwar al-Awlaki? What did the president of the United States serve as judge, jury and executioner of an American citizen? Why did the United States advocate for a human rights-abusing government to have one of their citizens placed in prison for indefinite detention, when he hadn’t yet been charged with a crime by the United States?

AMYGOODMAN: Well, what’s the answer?

JEREMYSCAHILL: Well, I think that the U.S., on the one hand, was afraid of Awlaki’s words. They didn’t want to give him a platform in a trial. I think they also wanted to continue to be able to monitor him to see who he was working with and who he was meeting with. And I ultimately think that they—that the calculus was, if we were to capture this American citizen, this is not the same as putting Osama bin Laden on trial, this is not the same as putting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on trial. This is an American citizen who speaks very articulate, fluent English and would probably have an incredible defense team. So I think part of it was that they never wanted him to see a day in court.

Now, I found Awlaki’s words and his involvement with a number of people who went on to commit acts of terrorism or mass violence reprehensible. That’s not the point here. The point is, if you’re going to make these allegations, you better be able to prove it. So, if Awlaki did in fact meet with either or both of the Paris shooters, that’s a relevant part of the story, but what I know from my reporting on the ground about the underwear bomber is that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a deranged young man, and AQAP wanted to make sure that he followed through on his plot. And my understanding is that they brought Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to Anwar al-Awlaki to essentially either groom him or to act as a sort of Islamic therapist who was sort of trying to get his mental health back up so that AQAP could do what they wanted to do with him. That’s my understanding of the role Awlaki played with AQAP, is that he was a guy who would help facilitate these people going to AQAP, but not that Awlaki was picking the targets or running the show.

AMYGOODMAN: We have to break. When we come back, we’re going to talk more about Chérif and Said Kouachi, about Amedy Coulibaly. Now, the French government and governments around the world are looking for Hayat Boumeddiene, the woman who they say was related to Amedy Coulibaly, not clear exactly what her role has been. They say she left France, went through Turkey, possibly is in Syria. And the person who has fallen off the map is the 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad. The day of the attack on the satirical magazine, on Charlie Hebdo, they said that he was driving the car. But he turned himself in and said, "I was in class," and many of his classmates tweeted this same fact. We haven’t heard about him again. This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back in a minute.

[break]

AMYGOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. The winter 2014 issue of Inspire, the English-language magazine of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, features an image of a Muslim man praying next to a pressure cooker, above an image of a French passport. The image is accompanied by text that reads, quote, "If you have the knowledge and inspiration all that’s left is to take action." Last spring, Inspire magazine published a "wanted" poster showing the name and photograph of Charlie Hebdo editor Stéphane Charbonnier, who was killed in last week’s attack.

Our guest for the hour is Jeremy Scahill, who is co-founder of The Intercept, where his most recent article is "Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula Directed Paris Attack," according to an al-Qaeda source. His latest book, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield. His film, nominated for an Academy Award, by the same title, Dirty Wars.

OK, Jeremy, if you can talk about, first of all, that latest Inspire magazine and what we know about the relationship between these attackers in France, who killed 17 people, and their relationship with AQAP? And also, where does ISIS fit into this?

JEREMYSCAHILL: Right, well, let’s take that on first about ISIS. You know, the man who did the siege at the kosher market released this martyr video that he recorded after the Charlie Hebdo offices were attacked by the two brothers. And it was like a hastily put together thing, where he put a picture of an Islamic flag on the wall behind him, and he did some exercises in front of it, and then he pledged his allegiance to Baghdadi, you know, and the caliphate trying to be established by the Islamic State. I wouldn’t read too deeply into his role with the Islamic State. It’s possible that there was, that he had gone and had some participation with members of the Islamic State. It’s also more likely that he was inspired by this and was trying to basically project an image that he was part of a bigger effort around the world to avenge the honor of the Prophet Muhammad and that, you know, this was sort of his last stand and that he was going to be a martyr. But, you know, the—

AMYGOODMAN: I want to go—

JEREMYSCAHILL: Yeah, go ahead.

AMYGOODMAN: —to the French media outlets, you know, broadcasting extracts of this video, reportedly to be Amedy Coulibaly. He said he had synchronized the attacks in Paris with the Kouachi brothers and that he was in allegiance with the Islamic State.

AMEDYCOULIBALY: [translated] You attack the caliphate. You attack the Islamic State. We are attacking you. One cannot attack and get nothing in return. So you’re playing the victim as if you don’t understand what was happening for some deaths, while you and your coalition, you heading it, you regularly bombard over there. You have sent forces. You are killing civilians. You are killing fighters. You are killing.

AMYGOODMAN: That’s Amedy Coulibaly, apparently, and not clear even who he made this video with, if he make it with someone else, which brings in this—the woman who they originally said was in the kosher supermarket with him, and perhaps had killed the French policewoman the day before. But it turns out they now say she had left like January 1st or January 2nd. They say she might be his girlfriend, his common-law wife, and may have made her way through Turkey to Syria.

JEREMYSCAHILL: Yeah, and, I mean, I’m—I think we all need to be very careful in speculating about—you know, in the immediate aftermath of things like this, they go and they sweep up all sorts of people, and they make allegations that these individuals may be tied to it. And we heard—I mean, if you watch in the minutes after this happened, you start to hear that there are other attacks that may be underway and that there is going to be multiple cells that are going to be attacking Paris tonight and that they’re looking at this network of people around them. I mean, that’s what happens in the aftermath of shootings like this. They scramble to try to find anyone connected to the individuals that they know were involved, you know, and in this case you had three people that they definitely knew were involved with tremendous acts of violence and mass murder. And, you know, a lot of people get swept up in that net.

So, what her potential role in this is, we don’t know. I mean, they’re putting a lot of scary images of her on television, showing her with a crossbow pointed at a camera and showing images of her with some of the suspects in this case. I don’t think we know enough yet. I mean, my understanding is that the—

AMYGOODMAN: And she’s totally covered there; you don’t even know if it’s her.

JEREMYSCAHILL: Right. I mean, it could be anyone. And the—but that the intelligence that they have about her whereabouts is largely from signals intelligence and tracking the position of a phone that she apparently, until a few days ago, still had on her.

AMYGOODMAN: And Turkey saying that she had come through.

JEREMYSCAHILL: Yeah, Turkey, and they’re saying that maybe she’s already in Syria. But again, all that is speculation. And, you know, the scaremongering machine is in full effect. It’s not to say that there aren’t scary people on the run or that there aren’t potentially dangerous people on the run. But if you watch, as I know you do, like if you watched big corporate media coverage over the weekend, it’s Fear, Inc., you know, and they’re just revving up the fear engine again. This is a serious incident. People need to be brought to justice for this. Anyone involved with it does. But, like, the fear is counterproductive. France deploying 10,000 soldiers on the streets of its city, I mean, this is—the state will always look for a reason to overreact and to sweep up civil liberties. That’s what we saw in this country after 9/11. We’ve never been able to roll it back. That’s exactly what’s happening in France right now.

AMYGOODMAN: How do they prepare for future attacks?

JEREMYSCAHILL: Well, I mean, the discussion you would hear on big corporate television about that is going to be about how do we defend our society, how do we integrate these networks, how do we do surveillance on these people. You know, this is probably going to be an unpopular thing to say, but I’ll say it because I believe it: The only way I think we’re ever going to effectively be able to confront this kind of terrorism is to take away the justification or the motivation of people who are not already sort of committed radical individuals who believe that what they’re doing is justified and they’re not afraid to die.

You know, the Taliban fighters always say, you know, "We love death as much as you love life." But a lot of these people who do these attacks, something happened in their life somewhere—similar to what happens with school shootings here, you know, what happened at Columbine. I liken a lot of these guys to people who go through some kind of period where they’re lost in life, and then they’re falling. Who catches you when you fall? A lot of times in a society that’s been decimated, a religion that’s been humiliated, people are looking for some kind of greater meaning, and there are a lot of people willing to take advantage of them.

But in a broader sense, what we’ve done since 9/11, and actually going back well before 9/11, with the unquestioning support for Israel, with the drone bombing campaigns, with the invasions and occupations of countries, with the torture of prisoners around the world, we have projected a message that we are at war with a religion. When Rupert Murdoch, the most powerful media figure in the world, goes on Twitter and uses the word "Moslem," but says that basically all Muslims are to blame for this until they stop it, that’s not lost on people around the world. And Bush used the word "crusade" in the early stages of the post-9/11 aftermath. So, I’m not saying that any of this is justified as a result of U.S. policy. But if we really want to confront this, we have to understand our own role in legitimizing it.

AMYGOODMAN: It was interesting to see Hollande in the middle of the line of world leaders, and on one side of him, just a few leaders down, is Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and on the other side, the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas.

JEREMYSCAHILL: Right. Well, Netanyahu, one of the biggest war criminals in the world for his—what he’s doing in Palestine. I mean, it’s shocking that someone like him is accepted as like someone who has any business being in a march about defense, freedoms or human rights.

AMYGOODMAN: So, let’s talk about the connection between ISIS and AQAP. Is there competition? Are they joining together? And to get out there, as we get to the end of this hour, even Boko Haram, I wanted to ask if you see any possible—even if they don’t start out linked—I mean, what hasn’t even been covered in the last week, the possibility that Boko Haram in Nigeria, where we have both reported, killed possibly 2,000 people.

JEREMYSCAHILL: Yeah. I mean, these are heinous, heinous criminals, Boko Haram. But also, you know, just not to get inside baseball about Nigerian politics, but how is it that the Nigerian state—Nigeria has the most powerful military in Africa, is deployed around Africa in so-called humanitarian missions. How is it that the Nigerian military is not able to confront Boko Haram in any effective way? I’m not alleging there’s a conspiracy here, but I guarantee you that very powerful individuals in Nigeria are allowing this to happen or looking the other way, similar to what happens with the Saudi royals with acts of terrorism around the world, where, on the one hand, they say, "Oh, we’re with America, and we denounce this," on the other hand, their cousin is one of the major funders of it.

You know, to answer your question—and we only have a little bit of time left—about ISIS, AQAP, Boko Haram, al-Shabab and others, those groups are all united in a very generic sense of perceiving that there is a world war against Islam and that they’re going to fight all of the nonbelievers, and that they’re not just going to defend themselves, but they’re also going to actively promote and project their interpretation of Islam on the world. On a micro level, the Islamic State and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula are fighting a turf war, and AQAP is aligned with other al-Qaeda-affiliated organizations throughout East Africa, North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and a few other spots around the world. They’re battling for funds from the diaspora. They’re battling for supremacy. It’s not an active military battle right now. It’s largely a propaganda battle waged on Twitter and social media and through official pronouncements.

But at the end of the day, as the AQAP source told me, "It doesn’t matter to us who did the shooting at the kosher market or if he was working with another group; what matters to us is that he did it, and that he was a Muslim, and that he declared that he was avenging the Prophet Muhammad. And that’s more important to us than who directed this." That, I think, is probably a widely shared sentiment across a number of these groups, many of which have issued statements praising it, but stopping short of saying, "Hey, we did this."

AMYGOODMAN: Will there be an intensification of the drone strikes in Yemen now?

JEREMYSCAHILL: Yes. I mean, there already has been in recent weeks. And let’s remember, too, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, if they are behind this—

AMYGOODMAN: We have one minute.

JEREMYSCAHILL: —this would be their deadliest external attack that they’ve been able to orchestrate or sort of plot or be involved with, you know, since Obama started bombing Yemen and since the creation of the group. And they’ve had a number of failed attempts. The vast majority of people who have died at the hands of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula are Yemenis and are other Muslims. But we don’t talk about that. The day the French shooting happened, AQAP attacked a police academy and killed 30 people in Sana’a. It wasn’t even a blip on the radar of media coverage. You know, and so, when we look at the future of what Obama is going to do there, if they go after them, they’ll go after them for this. They won’t go after them for killing other Yemenis or troops that are actually being funded by the United States inside of Yemen. It’s only when they scare us in our own languages or in our own societies, and the response is often disproportionate and ends up killing a lot of innocent people.

AMYGOODMAN: Do you think ISIS and AQAP are coming together?

JEREMYSCAHILL: No, I don’t. I don’t think they are, but I think they’re both happy that this happened.

AMYGOODMAN: And who do you think these three brothers—the two brothers and Coulibaly thought they were working for?

JEREMYSCAHILL: Well, we have their own words. They said that they were doing it on behalf of al-Qaeda in Yemen. They claim that they were financed by Anwar al-Awlaki, who was close to al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda is telling me that they played a role in this, al-Qaeda in Yemen. I think until there’s an official statement, we won’t know. But for now, I think we should take seriously what they’re saying, but also in the context that a lot of people have an agenda to say, "Hey, we were behind this," and those brothers had an agenda to say, "We are operating as part of a bigger network," because it helps in propaganda.

AMYGOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of the The Intercept. His recent article, we’ll link to at democracynow.org. His latest book, Dirty Wars.

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Mon, 12 Jan 2015 00:00:00 -0500"A Clash of Barbarisms": After Paris Attack, How U.S. Policy in Middle East Helps Fuel Extremismhttp://www.democracynow.org/2015/1/8/a_clash_of_barbarisms_after_paris
tag:democracynow.org,2015-01-08:en/story/7a2d9a AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . I&#8217;m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh. The French newspaper Le Monde has just published a horrific photograph of the insides of the magazine office of Charlie Hebdo covered in blood. Nermeen?
NERMEEN SHAIKH : We&#8217;re joined now by Gilbert Achcar. He&#8217;s a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies, or SOAS , at the University of London. His most recent books are Marxism, Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism and The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising .
Welcome to Democracy Now! , Gilbert Achcar. I&#8217;d like to begin by asking you about your response to the fact that all the suspects so far identified in this attack yesterday appear to have been French citizens. So could you talk about the position of Muslim communities in France and your response to what happened yesterday and the news about these suspects?
GILBERT ACHCAR : Well, I think that in France or elsewhere in Western countries, and obviously in Europe, the migrant, the communities—sorry, the communities of migrant background, especially when they come from Muslim-majority countries, are subject to forms of racism and various forms of discrimination and oppression, which are the breeding ground for the kind of hatred in response to that societal hatred that I just mentioned. And so, it&#8217;s not—I mean, it&#8217;s not surprising, in this way.
And more generally, I would say, this is also part of a general dynamics created by facts that were mentioned during the discussion, the previous discussion here with you. The Western intervention, the Western action in the Middle East, has been creating the ground for all this. And this is what I called previously the clash of barbarisms, with a major barbarism represented by Western intervention, by especially the United States&#8217; conduct in this region, provoking a counterbarbarism, which is minor compared to the major one, but which is nevertheless a barbarism, this is. And this, we just had a new illustration of that. But this is part of a clash of barbarisms. We have to understand this. And this—I mean, even if we think of rampage killing, this action, which is absolutely shocking and appalling, but, I mean, it comes—you know, in the list of rampage killing for religious-related reasons, it comes far beyond the Norwegian Islamophobic murder of over 75 people and with—can&#8217;t remember the figure, but something like in the hundreds of people wounded—
AMY GOODMAN : Anders Breivik.
GILBERT ACHCAR : —and beyond Baruch Goldstein, the ultra-Zionist extremist who killed over 29 people in &#8217;94 in Palestine.
So, I mean, this—we have to put all this in context and understand that all these appalling features come from somewhere. And this somewhere is, before everything, the action of the West, the responsibility of the West, and also the responsibility of the West and the United States, in particular, in fostering the source, the ideological source, of all this—of the most fanatical, most reactionary interpretation of Islam, that is the Saudi kingdom. The Saudi kingdom has—I mean, the United States has been the godfather of the Saudi kingdom practically since its inception, or since, let&#8217;s say, 10 years after it came to existence and when—with the discovery of oil in that country. And this country has been the oldest, most ancient ally of the United States in that part of the world, much, much older ally than Israel or anyone else, and the best ally of the United States, in some way, with a lot of connections and, of course, a lot of economic advantage being taken by the United States from the connection with this kingdom, which is based on the worst possible interpretation of Islam. So, just imagine you had the same, you know, with—
AMY GOODMAN : On that note, we have to end. We&#8217;re going to get a minute&#8217;s comment from you after the show and post it online, Gilbert Achcar, professor of the School of Oriental and African Studies at University of London. AMYGOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh. The French newspaper Le Monde has just published a horrific photograph of the insides of the magazine office of Charlie Hebdo covered in blood. Nermeen?

NERMEENSHAIKH: We’re joined now by Gilbert Achcar. He’s a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies, or SOAS, at the University of London. His most recent books are Marxism, Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism and The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Gilbert Achcar. I’d like to begin by asking you about your response to the fact that all the suspects so far identified in this attack yesterday appear to have been French citizens. So could you talk about the position of Muslim communities in France and your response to what happened yesterday and the news about these suspects?

GILBERTACHCAR: Well, I think that in France or elsewhere in Western countries, and obviously in Europe, the migrant, the communities—sorry, the communities of migrant background, especially when they come from Muslim-majority countries, are subject to forms of racism and various forms of discrimination and oppression, which are the breeding ground for the kind of hatred in response to that societal hatred that I just mentioned. And so, it’s not—I mean, it’s not surprising, in this way.

And more generally, I would say, this is also part of a general dynamics created by facts that were mentioned during the discussion, the previous discussion here with you. The Western intervention, the Western action in the Middle East, has been creating the ground for all this. And this is what I called previously the clash of barbarisms, with a major barbarism represented by Western intervention, by especially the United States’ conduct in this region, provoking a counterbarbarism, which is minor compared to the major one, but which is nevertheless a barbarism, this is. And this, we just had a new illustration of that. But this is part of a clash of barbarisms. We have to understand this. And this—I mean, even if we think of rampage killing, this action, which is absolutely shocking and appalling, but, I mean, it comes—you know, in the list of rampage killing for religious-related reasons, it comes far beyond the Norwegian Islamophobic murder of over 75 people and with—can’t remember the figure, but something like in the hundreds of people wounded—

AMYGOODMAN: Anders Breivik.

GILBERTACHCAR: —and beyond Baruch Goldstein, the ultra-Zionist extremist who killed over 29 people in ’94 in Palestine.

So, I mean, this—we have to put all this in context and understand that all these appalling features come from somewhere. And this somewhere is, before everything, the action of the West, the responsibility of the West, and also the responsibility of the West and the United States, in particular, in fostering the source, the ideological source, of all this—of the most fanatical, most reactionary interpretation of Islam, that is the Saudi kingdom. The Saudi kingdom has—I mean, the United States has been the godfather of the Saudi kingdom practically since its inception, or since, let’s say, 10 years after it came to existence and when—with the discovery of oil in that country. And this country has been the oldest, most ancient ally of the United States in that part of the world, much, much older ally than Israel or anyone else, and the best ally of the United States, in some way, with a lot of connections and, of course, a lot of economic advantage being taken by the United States from the connection with this kingdom, which is based on the worst possible interpretation of Islam. So, just imagine you had the same, you know, with—

AMYGOODMAN: On that note, we have to end. We’re going to get a minute’s comment from you after the show and post it online, Gilbert Achcar, professor of the School of Oriental and African Studies at University of London.

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Thu, 08 Jan 2015 00:00:00 -0500The Afghan War is Not Over: U.S. Ends 13-Year Combat Mission, But 10,000+ Troops Continue the Fighthttp://www.democracynow.org/2014/12/29/the_afghan_war_is_not_over
tag:democracynow.org,2014-12-29:en/story/42b2a8 AMY GOODMAN : The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan officially concluded its combat mission on Sunday, 13 years after it started in 2001, ending the longest war in U.S. history. The commander of the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF , General John Campbell, announced the end of formal combat operations.
GEN . JOHN CAMPBELL : Today marks the end of an era and the beginning of a new one. Today NATO completes its combat mission, a 13-year endeavor filled with significant achievements and branded by tremendous sacrifice, especially by the thousands of coalition and Afghan army and police wounded and fallen who gave so much to build a better future for this war-torn land.
AMY GOODMAN : But the war is not over. The Obama administration said earlier this month it would leave a residual U.S. force of about 11,000 troops in Afghanistan for at least the first months of 2015 to assist Afghan security forces under the mission known as Resolute Support. And last month President Obama secretly extended the U.S. role in Afghanistan. According to The New York Times , he signed a classified order that ensures American troops will have a direct role in fighting. The order reportedly enables American jets, bombers and drones to bolster Afghan troops on combat missions. Under certain circumstances, it would apparently authorize U.S. airstrikes to support Afghan military operations throughout the country. Afghanistan&#8217;s new president, Ashraf Ghani, who took office in September, has also backed an expanded U.S. military role.
This comes as 2014 marked the deadliest in Afghanistan since 2001. The United Nations reports nearly 3,200 Afghan civilians were killed in the intensifying war with the Taliban, a 20 percent rise from 2013. The national army and police also suffered record losses this year, with more than 4,600 killed.
For more, we&#8217;re joined by two guests. Kathy Kelly is with us in studio, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, a campaign to end U.S. military and economic warfare. She returned from Kabul last month and is heading soon to prison over a drone protest in Missouri. She recently wrote an article headlined &quot;Obama Extends War in Afghanistan: The implications for U.S. democracy aren&#8217;t reassuring.&quot;
And Matt Aikins also joins us, a journalist based in Kabul. He&#8217;s joining us from Halifax, Nova Scotia, in Canada. Aikins is currently a Schell fellow at The Nation Institute. His recent report for Rolling Stone magazine is headlined &quot;Afghanistan: The Making of a Narco State.&quot;
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Kathy Kelly, you were just in Afghanistan. What is the significance of saying the formal war is over, but in fact the formal war continues with U.S. troops fighting?
KATHY KELLY : Well, I think the United States doesn&#8217;t want to acknowledge that what went on over the last 13 years, at a cost of $1 trillion, has been not only a defeat, but, as one British commentator said, also a disgrace. I mean, the extent of spending, $80 billion under the Obama administration, that fueled corruption, that did not improve the lives of people in Afghanistan in any measurable way, ought never, ever to be held up as some kind of a success story. But I think the United States wants to walk away from responsibilities within Afghanistan, certainly doesn&#8217;t talk about paying reparations.
AMY GOODMAN : Matt Aikins, talk about officially what this means. You have lived in Afghanistan for a long time covering it. How is this seen in Afghanistan?
MATTHIEU AIKINS : Well, the scene in Afghanistan really isn&#8217;t going to change today. The war continues, by any measure. You have 11,000 U.S. troops with new combat authorities. You have rising levels of violence. You have the highest-ever casualties both for Afghan security forces and civilians. So in no sense but the semantic can this war be said to be over. And if we have the end of—the formal end of a war, that means the beginning of an informal war, which is troubling indeed, as Kathy says.
AMY GOODMAN : On Thursday, President Obama addressed troops gathered for Christmas dinner at a Marine Corps base in Hawaii. He spoke about the end of the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA : We have been in continuous war now for almost 13 years, over 13 years. And next week, we will be ending our combat mission in Afghanistan. Obviously, because of the extraordinary service of the men and women in the American armed forces, Afghanistan has a chance to rebuild its own country. We are safer. It&#8217;s not going to be a source of terrorist attacks again. And we still have some very difficult missions around the world, including in Iraq. We still have folks in Afghanistan helping Afghan security forces.
AMY GOODMAN : The outgoing defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, spoke earlier this month, talking about the United States keeping an additional 1,000 troops in Afghanistan on top of the nearly 10,000 already committed to remain beyond this year. He announced the move during a visit to Afghanistan.
DEFENSE SECRETARY CHUCK HAGEL : President Obama has provided U.S. military commanders the flexibility, the flexibility to manage any temporary force shortfalls that we might experience for a few months, as we allow for coalition troops to arrive in theater. This will mean a delayed withdrawal of up to 1,000 U.S. troops, so that up to 10,800 troops, rather than 9,800, could remain in Afghanistan through the end of this year and for the first few months next year.
AMY GOODMAN : Hagel said the change is temporary and won&#8217;t change the long-term timeline for withdrawing troops. The announcement came amidst a surge in Taliban attacks over the past several months. And the new president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, Kathy Kelly, has lifted former President Karzai&#8217;s ban on night raids. The significance of this?
KATHY KELLY : Well, using the night raids, which is their means of surprising the Taliban by bursting into homes at 3:30 in the morning, by arresting people, possibly disappearing them over a period of months or possibly longer, is a despised tactic. It&#8217;s a way, many say, to recruit more people to either tolerate or support the Taliban.
But the decision on the part of Ashraf Ghani shows a willingness to continue cooperating with the corruption of the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. He, I think, has tried to make some changes, for instance, in going after corrupt figures within the Kabul Bank, but why is he so reluctant to disobey any orders from the United States or disobey the desires of the United States? Well, I think we see that even Britain now is saying that they had seen themselves as being in a subordinate roll to the United States and now look back with a great deal of remorse on the disgrace that the war has brought on Britain.
AMY GOODMAN : Matt Aikins, what has been the result of this war? We won&#8217;t say &quot;with its end,&quot; but at this sort of point, 13 years in, what has been the effect on Afghanistan?
MATTHIEU AIKINS : Well, getting back to the last point about President Ghani&#8217;s cooperation with the U.S. military, one of the results has been an extremely dependent state, perhaps the most aid-dependent large state in history. And so, the Afghan government can&#8217;t possibly pay for its budget expenditures. It can&#8217;t pay for the overlarge army and police force that we&#8217;ve created for it. It&#8217;s billions of dollars in excess of its revenues. So, there really is no choice—I think President Ghani recognizes that—but to cooperate with the U.S. military, because the government would collapse very swiftly if international support were withdrawn.
On a number of other indicators, you have mixed results. In the cities, in places like Kabul, there&#8217;s been significant development. Education has been a success story. But if you travel outside of the capital, which [inaudible] increasingly do because of the rising insecurity, you&#8217;ll find that there&#8217;s things like child malnutrition, food insecurity, growing opium production, which we&#8217;ll talk about in a minute, I guess, and just an increased level of violence and insecurity that paints a very stark divide between the urban and rural parts of the country.
AMY GOODMAN : And what about women&#8217;s rights, Matt?
MATTHIEU AIKINS : Well, women&#8217;s rights have made a lot of gains in urban areas, places like Kabul, especially symbolic ones. But the fact of the matter is, is that in rural areas, particularly ones afflicted by insecurity in the south, there hasn&#8217;t been a lot of change. And in any case, this change isn&#8217;t going to come at the barrel of a gun. It&#8217;s not going to come in conditions of insecurity.
The question now is whether the gains that have been made in urban areas are going to be rolled back, if there&#8217;s going to be—not just for women&#8217;s rights, but for things like free speech, for things like the rule of law, corruption, human rights abuses by the Afghan security forces, whether these are going to be areas where we&#8217;re going to see, you know, a retreat in progress, especially as the mission there becomes one that&#8217;s primarily focused on counterterrorism and military goals. So there needs to be pressure, not just from the administration, but from all voices in Afghanistan, to make sure that those hard-fought gains, gains that were hard-fought not just by the internationals, but mostly by the Afghan people themselves, aren&#8217;t lost.
AMY GOODMAN : The significance of the Pakistani military and the role it plays now in Afghanistan? After the Army Public School massacre by the Taliban earlier this month in Peshawar, the Pakistani prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, pledged solidarity with his Afghan neighbor in fighting terrorism. The attack in Peshawar killed 152 people, including 133 children.
PRIME MINISTER NAWAZ SHARIF : [translated] Pakistan will not tolerate these militant elements on its territory. If our territory is used for any activities against Afghanistan, we will deal with it very strongly, and we&#8217;ll take tough action against those elements. In the same way, if anything like this happens on the Afghan side, they will also deal with it in a strong manner. After General Raheel&#8217;s visit to Kabul, they have carried out an operation in the region.
AMY GOODMAN : Matt Aikins, if you can talk about the effect—what&#8217;s going to happen with the Pakistani military&#8217;s relationship in Afghanistan with the military and with the Taliban?
MATTHIEU AIKINS : Well, you have to remember that we&#8217;ve seen this kind of rhetoric from the government before after similar shocking incidents. There was an attack in 2011 against the Pakistani naval base in Karachi by the Taliban, attack against the general headquarters in 2009. There was the whole incident of the Lal Masjid siege in 2007, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. And after, you know, each one of these sort of watershed so-called moments, you&#8217;ve seen the same kind of rhetoric, that there&#8217;s no more—there&#8217;s going to be no more distinction between good and bad Taliban, we&#8217;re going to go after their sanctuaries in the tribal areas, we&#8217;re not going to support militants in Afghanistan.
But the fact of the matter is, is that the relationship, the complex relationship, between the Pakistani state and various militant groups are tied to much deeper strategic and structural interests of the military, of Pakistan&#8217;s central government. So, it remains to be seen whether this actually represents some sort of fundamental shift. And certainly, one incident isn&#8217;t going to—isn&#8217;t going to solve it. There&#8217;s been plenty of massacres in Pakistan of children, of innocents. And this is not going to change their calculations all of a sudden. AMYGOODMAN: The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan officially concluded its combat mission on Sunday, 13 years after it started in 2001, ending the longest war in U.S. history. The commander of the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, General John Campbell, announced the end of formal combat operations.

GEN. JOHNCAMPBELL: Today marks the end of an era and the beginning of a new one. Today NATO completes its combat mission, a 13-year endeavor filled with significant achievements and branded by tremendous sacrifice, especially by the thousands of coalition and Afghan army and police wounded and fallen who gave so much to build a better future for this war-torn land.

AMYGOODMAN: But the war is not over. The Obama administration said earlier this month it would leave a residual U.S. force of about 11,000 troops in Afghanistan for at least the first months of 2015 to assist Afghan security forces under the mission known as Resolute Support. And last month President Obama secretly extended the U.S. role in Afghanistan. According to The New York Times, he signed a classified order that ensures American troops will have a direct role in fighting. The order reportedly enables American jets, bombers and drones to bolster Afghan troops on combat missions. Under certain circumstances, it would apparently authorize U.S. airstrikes to support Afghan military operations throughout the country. Afghanistan’s new president, Ashraf Ghani, who took office in September, has also backed an expanded U.S. military role.

This comes as 2014 marked the deadliest in Afghanistan since 2001. The United Nations reports nearly 3,200 Afghan civilians were killed in the intensifying war with the Taliban, a 20 percent rise from 2013. The national army and police also suffered record losses this year, with more than 4,600 killed.

For more, we’re joined by two guests. Kathy Kelly is with us in studio, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, a campaign to end U.S. military and economic warfare. She returned from Kabul last month and is heading soon to prison over a drone protest in Missouri. She recently wrote an article headlined "Obama Extends War in Afghanistan: The implications for U.S. democracy aren’t reassuring."

And Matt Aikins also joins us, a journalist based in Kabul. He’s joining us from Halifax, Nova Scotia, in Canada. Aikins is currently a Schell fellow at The Nation Institute. His recent report for Rolling Stone magazine is headlined "Afghanistan: The Making of a Narco State."

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Kathy Kelly, you were just in Afghanistan. What is the significance of saying the formal war is over, but in fact the formal war continues with U.S. troops fighting?

KATHYKELLY: Well, I think the United States doesn’t want to acknowledge that what went on over the last 13 years, at a cost of $1 trillion, has been not only a defeat, but, as one British commentator said, also a disgrace. I mean, the extent of spending, $80 billion under the Obama administration, that fueled corruption, that did not improve the lives of people in Afghanistan in any measurable way, ought never, ever to be held up as some kind of a success story. But I think the United States wants to walk away from responsibilities within Afghanistan, certainly doesn’t talk about paying reparations.

AMYGOODMAN: Matt Aikins, talk about officially what this means. You have lived in Afghanistan for a long time covering it. How is this seen in Afghanistan?

MATTHIEUAIKINS: Well, the scene in Afghanistan really isn’t going to change today. The war continues, by any measure. You have 11,000 U.S. troops with new combat authorities. You have rising levels of violence. You have the highest-ever casualties both for Afghan security forces and civilians. So in no sense but the semantic can this war be said to be over. And if we have the end of—the formal end of a war, that means the beginning of an informal war, which is troubling indeed, as Kathy says.

AMYGOODMAN: On Thursday, President Obama addressed troops gathered for Christmas dinner at a Marine Corps base in Hawaii. He spoke about the end of the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan.

PRESIDENTBARACKOBAMA: We have been in continuous war now for almost 13 years, over 13 years. And next week, we will be ending our combat mission in Afghanistan. Obviously, because of the extraordinary service of the men and women in the American armed forces, Afghanistan has a chance to rebuild its own country. We are safer. It’s not going to be a source of terrorist attacks again. And we still have some very difficult missions around the world, including in Iraq. We still have folks in Afghanistan helping Afghan security forces.

AMYGOODMAN: The outgoing defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, spoke earlier this month, talking about the United States keeping an additional 1,000 troops in Afghanistan on top of the nearly 10,000 already committed to remain beyond this year. He announced the move during a visit to Afghanistan.

DEFENSESECRETARYCHUCKHAGEL: President Obama has provided U.S. military commanders the flexibility, the flexibility to manage any temporary force shortfalls that we might experience for a few months, as we allow for coalition troops to arrive in theater. This will mean a delayed withdrawal of up to 1,000 U.S. troops, so that up to 10,800 troops, rather than 9,800, could remain in Afghanistan through the end of this year and for the first few months next year.

AMYGOODMAN: Hagel said the change is temporary and won’t change the long-term timeline for withdrawing troops. The announcement came amidst a surge in Taliban attacks over the past several months. And the new president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, Kathy Kelly, has lifted former President Karzai’s ban on night raids. The significance of this?

KATHYKELLY: Well, using the night raids, which is their means of surprising the Taliban by bursting into homes at 3:30 in the morning, by arresting people, possibly disappearing them over a period of months or possibly longer, is a despised tactic. It’s a way, many say, to recruit more people to either tolerate or support the Taliban.

But the decision on the part of Ashraf Ghani shows a willingness to continue cooperating with the corruption of the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. He, I think, has tried to make some changes, for instance, in going after corrupt figures within the Kabul Bank, but why is he so reluctant to disobey any orders from the United States or disobey the desires of the United States? Well, I think we see that even Britain now is saying that they had seen themselves as being in a subordinate roll to the United States and now look back with a great deal of remorse on the disgrace that the war has brought on Britain.

AMYGOODMAN: Matt Aikins, what has been the result of this war? We won’t say "with its end," but at this sort of point, 13 years in, what has been the effect on Afghanistan?

MATTHIEUAIKINS: Well, getting back to the last point about President Ghani’s cooperation with the U.S. military, one of the results has been an extremely dependent state, perhaps the most aid-dependent large state in history. And so, the Afghan government can’t possibly pay for its budget expenditures. It can’t pay for the overlarge army and police force that we’ve created for it. It’s billions of dollars in excess of its revenues. So, there really is no choice—I think President Ghani recognizes that—but to cooperate with the U.S. military, because the government would collapse very swiftly if international support were withdrawn.

On a number of other indicators, you have mixed results. In the cities, in places like Kabul, there’s been significant development. Education has been a success story. But if you travel outside of the capital, which [inaudible] increasingly do because of the rising insecurity, you’ll find that there’s things like child malnutrition, food insecurity, growing opium production, which we’ll talk about in a minute, I guess, and just an increased level of violence and insecurity that paints a very stark divide between the urban and rural parts of the country.

AMYGOODMAN: And what about women’s rights, Matt?

MATTHIEUAIKINS: Well, women’s rights have made a lot of gains in urban areas, places like Kabul, especially symbolic ones. But the fact of the matter is, is that in rural areas, particularly ones afflicted by insecurity in the south, there hasn’t been a lot of change. And in any case, this change isn’t going to come at the barrel of a gun. It’s not going to come in conditions of insecurity.

The question now is whether the gains that have been made in urban areas are going to be rolled back, if there’s going to be—not just for women’s rights, but for things like free speech, for things like the rule of law, corruption, human rights abuses by the Afghan security forces, whether these are going to be areas where we’re going to see, you know, a retreat in progress, especially as the mission there becomes one that’s primarily focused on counterterrorism and military goals. So there needs to be pressure, not just from the administration, but from all voices in Afghanistan, to make sure that those hard-fought gains, gains that were hard-fought not just by the internationals, but mostly by the Afghan people themselves, aren’t lost.

AMYGOODMAN: The significance of the Pakistani military and the role it plays now in Afghanistan? After the Army Public School massacre by the Taliban earlier this month in Peshawar, the Pakistani prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, pledged solidarity with his Afghan neighbor in fighting terrorism. The attack in Peshawar killed 152 people, including 133 children.

PRIMEMINISTERNAWAZSHARIF: [translated] Pakistan will not tolerate these militant elements on its territory. If our territory is used for any activities against Afghanistan, we will deal with it very strongly, and we’ll take tough action against those elements. In the same way, if anything like this happens on the Afghan side, they will also deal with it in a strong manner. After General Raheel’s visit to Kabul, they have carried out an operation in the region.

AMYGOODMAN: Matt Aikins, if you can talk about the effect—what’s going to happen with the Pakistani military’s relationship in Afghanistan with the military and with the Taliban?

MATTHIEUAIKINS: Well, you have to remember that we’ve seen this kind of rhetoric from the government before after similar shocking incidents. There was an attack in 2011 against the Pakistani naval base in Karachi by the Taliban, attack against the general headquarters in 2009. There was the whole incident of the Lal Masjid siege in 2007, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. And after, you know, each one of these sort of watershed so-called moments, you’ve seen the same kind of rhetoric, that there’s no more—there’s going to be no more distinction between good and bad Taliban, we’re going to go after their sanctuaries in the tribal areas, we’re not going to support militants in Afghanistan.

But the fact of the matter is, is that the relationship, the complex relationship, between the Pakistani state and various militant groups are tied to much deeper strategic and structural interests of the military, of Pakistan’s central government. So, it remains to be seen whether this actually represents some sort of fundamental shift. And certainly, one incident isn’t going to—isn’t going to solve it. There’s been plenty of massacres in Pakistan of children, of innocents. And this is not going to change their calculations all of a sudden.

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Mon, 29 Dec 2014 00:00:00 -0500Peace Activist Kathy Kelly Heads to Prison for Protesting U.S. Drone Warhttp://www.democracynow.org/2014/12/29/peace_activist_kathy_kelly_heads_to
tag:democracynow.org,2014-12-29:en/story/4d5290 AMY GOODMAN : Kathy Kelly, in addition to U.S. troops staying, 11,000 troops staying, and participating not only in Operation Resolute Support, but fighting themselves directly, they&#8217;ll be supported by bombers, drones. You participated in a drone strike, and you&#8217;re headed home to Chicago, then to prison. Talk about this drone strike and why you chose to get arrested.
KATHY KELLY : Well, I think it&#8217;s a good time to be very uncompromising with regard to the United States&#8217; wars. These wars are murderous. The wars are killing civilians, as has been happening in the United States&#8217; wars since World War II. Now 90 percent of the people killed in wars are civilians. And this is true certainly with the drone strikes. The Reprieve organization has said that for every one person who is selected as a target for assassination, 28 civilians are killed. And even just three nights ago, there was another targeted assassination in which they hit two homes in the Logar province, and six people were wounded, four people were killed, all of them civilians.
And so, I crossed a line at Whiteman Air Force Base. A squadron operates weaponized drones over Afghanistan. Afghanistan has been an epicenter of drone warfare. And a good symbol for people in Afghanistan is breaking bread. I carried a loaf of bread and a letter, wanting to talk to the commandant. We thought it was important to know how many people were killed by Whiteman Air Force Base on that day.
AMY GOODMAN : Where is Whiteman?
KATHY KELLY : That&#8217;s in Knob Noster, Missouri.
AMY GOODMAN : And what&#8217;s its relationship with Afghanistan?
KATHY KELLY : Well, the weaponized drones are flown—once they&#8217;re airborne, they&#8217;re operated entirely by people in United States Air National Guard bases and air bases. And so, Whiteman Air Force Base won&#8217;t disclose, neither will the CIA disclose, information about the results of these killings, but this is what people in the United States need to know. We have a First Amendment right to seek redress of grievance. And having been in Afghanistan, living with young people who are too frightened to go back to visit their own relatives, who see for themselves a future that could be a prolonged, exacerbated warfare, there is a grievance, and we wanted to bring that to the commandant at that particular base.
AMY GOODMAN : I said you participated in a strike; I meant to say in a drone protest. So, exactly what was the action you engaged in?
KATHY KELLY : Well, I think I stepped one or two steps over a line. And—
AMY GOODMAN : Holding a loaf of bread and an indictment?
KATHY KELLY : And so the military prosecutor said, &quot;Your Honor, Ms. Kelly is in grave need, great need, of rehabilitation.&quot; But I think it&#8217;s a—this is an important time to connect these oppressive issues. You know, while we&#8217;re spending $1 trillion on warfare in Afghanistan and looking at another $120 billion that will be spent—the Pentagon wants $57 billion for this year alone—we&#8217;re squandering needed resources. We&#8217;re undermining the possibility of solving extremely serious problems that we&#8217;re moving into.
AMY GOODMAN : How long will you be going to prison for?
KATHY KELLY : Three months.
AMY GOODMAN : Where?
KATHY KELLY : Well, I don&#8217;t know yet. The Bureau of Prisons will tell me where I&#8217;m to be put, probably at the end of January.
AMY GOODMAN : How many times have you gone to prison for protesting war?
KATHY KELLY : Well, this will be my third time in a federal—well, no, fourth time in a federal prison. And I&#8217;ve been jailed in various county jails and other kinds of lockups more times than I can count.
AMY GOODMAN : Kathy Kelly, I want to thank you very much for being with us—
KATHY KELLY : Thank you, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN : —co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, a campaign to end U.S. military and economic warfare, just returned from Kabul, Afghanistan. We&#8217;ll link your recent piece , &quot;Obama Extends War in Afghanistan: The implications for U.S. democracy aren&#8217;t reassuring.&quot; And, Matt Aikins, please stay with us. I want to talk about your latest piece looking at Afghanistan; the piece is &quot;Afghanistan: The Making of a Narco State.&quot; Stay with us. AMYGOODMAN: Kathy Kelly, in addition to U.S. troops staying, 11,000 troops staying, and participating not only in Operation Resolute Support, but fighting themselves directly, they’ll be supported by bombers, drones. You participated in a drone strike, and you’re headed home to Chicago, then to prison. Talk about this drone strike and why you chose to get arrested.

KATHYKELLY: Well, I think it’s a good time to be very uncompromising with regard to the United States’ wars. These wars are murderous. The wars are killing civilians, as has been happening in the United States’ wars since World War II. Now 90 percent of the people killed in wars are civilians. And this is true certainly with the drone strikes. The Reprieve organization has said that for every one person who is selected as a target for assassination, 28 civilians are killed. And even just three nights ago, there was another targeted assassination in which they hit two homes in the Logar province, and six people were wounded, four people were killed, all of them civilians.

And so, I crossed a line at Whiteman Air Force Base. A squadron operates weaponized drones over Afghanistan. Afghanistan has been an epicenter of drone warfare. And a good symbol for people in Afghanistan is breaking bread. I carried a loaf of bread and a letter, wanting to talk to the commandant. We thought it was important to know how many people were killed by Whiteman Air Force Base on that day.

AMYGOODMAN: Where is Whiteman?

KATHYKELLY: That’s in Knob Noster, Missouri.

AMYGOODMAN: And what’s its relationship with Afghanistan?

KATHYKELLY: Well, the weaponized drones are flown—once they’re airborne, they’re operated entirely by people in United States Air National Guard bases and air bases. And so, Whiteman Air Force Base won’t disclose, neither will the CIA disclose, information about the results of these killings, but this is what people in the United States need to know. We have a First Amendment right to seek redress of grievance. And having been in Afghanistan, living with young people who are too frightened to go back to visit their own relatives, who see for themselves a future that could be a prolonged, exacerbated warfare, there is a grievance, and we wanted to bring that to the commandant at that particular base.

AMYGOODMAN: I said you participated in a strike; I meant to say in a drone protest. So, exactly what was the action you engaged in?

KATHYKELLY: Well, I think I stepped one or two steps over a line. And—

AMYGOODMAN: Holding a loaf of bread and an indictment?

KATHYKELLY: And so the military prosecutor said, "Your Honor, Ms. Kelly is in grave need, great need, of rehabilitation." But I think it’s a—this is an important time to connect these oppressive issues. You know, while we’re spending $1 trillion on warfare in Afghanistan and looking at another $120 billion that will be spent—the Pentagon wants $57 billion for this year alone—we’re squandering needed resources. We’re undermining the possibility of solving extremely serious problems that we’re moving into.

AMYGOODMAN: How long will you be going to prison for?

KATHYKELLY: Three months.

AMYGOODMAN: Where?

KATHYKELLY: Well, I don’t know yet. The Bureau of Prisons will tell me where I’m to be put, probably at the end of January.

AMYGOODMAN: How many times have you gone to prison for protesting war?

KATHYKELLY: Well, this will be my third time in a federal—well, no, fourth time in a federal prison. And I’ve been jailed in various county jails and other kinds of lockups more times than I can count.

AMYGOODMAN: Kathy Kelly, I want to thank you very much for being with us—

KATHYKELLY: Thank you, Amy.

AMYGOODMAN: —co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, a campaign to end U.S. military and economic warfare, just returned from Kabul, Afghanistan. We’ll link your recent piece, "Obama Extends War in Afghanistan: The implications for U.S. democracy aren’t reassuring." And, Matt Aikins, please stay with us. I want to talk about your latest piece looking at Afghanistan; the piece is "Afghanistan: The Making of a Narco State." Stay with us.

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Mon, 29 Dec 2014 00:00:00 -0500The Worst Narco-State in History? After 13-Year War, Afghanistan's Opium Trade Floods the Globehttp://www.democracynow.org/2014/12/29/the_worst_narco_state_in_history
tag:democracynow.org,2014-12-29:en/story/2067e7 AMY GOODMAN : As the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan officially concluded its combat mission Sunday, 13 years after it started in 2001, ending the longest war in U.S. history, we continue speaking with Matt Aikins, a journalist usually based in Kabul. He&#8217;s speaking to us by Democracy Now! video stream from Halifax, Nova Scotia, in Canada. His recent article for Rolling Stone magazine is headlined &quot;Afghanistan: The Making of a Narco State.&quot; Why don&#8217;t you lay out for us what has happened in Afghanistan around the growing of heroin, Matt Aikins?
MATTHIEU AIKINS : Sure. Well, today Afghanistan produces twice as much opium as it did in the year 2000. And this spring I traveled to Helmand province in southern Afghanistan to witness what would be the largest harvest of opium in Afghanistan&#8217;s history. It&#8217;s a record year. And all over the south, east, west and north of the country, hundreds of thousands of people were taking part in this labor-intensive opium harvest. So, what has happened in Afghanistan over the last 13 years has been the flourishing of a narco-state that really is without any parallel in history. It accounts for 15 percent of the GDP , which is more than double what cocaine accounted for at the height of Escobar-era Colombia. So, this is something that&#8217;s extraordinary, that&#8217;s catastrophic, that has grave danger for the future, and yet there&#8217;s been virtually no discussion of in recent years.
AMY GOODMAN : Who&#8217;s growing it? Who&#8217;s profiting?
MATTHIEU AIKINS : Everyone is growing it. Everyone is profiting. It touches all levels of Afghan society, both sides of the conflict, the Taliban and the government. The Taliban is definitely involved. They profit by taxing the trade, by taxing growers in their areas. But the government is even more involved. Government-linked officials are believed to earn an even higher piece of revenue from the opium trade.
AMY GOODMAN : Talk more about the involvement of the Afghanistan government. Again, quite an amazing fact that Afghanistan provides 90 percent of the opium in the world.
MATTHIEU AIKINS : Well, what&#8217;s important to remember is the history here. So, after 2001, the U.S., in its quest for vengeance against the Taliban and al-Qaeda, partnered with the very warlords whose criminality and human rights abuses had created the conditions that led to the rise of the Taliban in the first place. And in many cases, these are the same individuals who were responsible for bringing large-scale opium cultivation to Afghanistan during the war against the Soviets. When they were backed by the CIA and Pakistan&#8217;s military, they became involved in heroin trafficking and opium production.
So, for example, in Helmand, which is the most—the largest opium-producing province in Afghanistan, they brought back a member of the Akhundzada family. Karzai appointed him as governor. He was a key ally of the U.S. special forces there. And this is the same guy who had been responsible for bringing opium production to Afghanistan. So, the reason that opium has flourished in Afghanistan is because we have brought in, supported, tolerated figures who are involved in very grave criminality and in human rights abuses and in torture. And we&#8217;ve done this because it&#8217;s been deemed militarily expedient. The generals and diplomats have decided that to pursue these, you know, narrow goals of defeating the Taliban, we needed some—to support these criminals.
AMY GOODMAN : Talk about Marjah more. Talk about its going from poppy-free to what it is today.
MATTHIEU AIKINS : Yes. Well, you probably remember Marjah was the site of one of the largest battles of the war, the Battle of Marjah, where the Marines air-assaulted into this stretch of irrigated canal land, that had actually, in a rather ironic twist of history, been built by a USAID -funded project in the 1950s and &#8217;60s as part of the Cold War rivalry with the Soviets. They built this huge canal-irrigated zone west of Helmand that brought, you know, agriculture to the desert. And that was eventually turned into a center for poppy cultivation and a bastion of the Taliban, you know, by the mid-2000s.
So the Marines air-assaulted in. There was this very televised battle. They threw the Taliban out. And for a few years, the area was indeed poppy-free. But since then, as the Marines have left, as the Afghan government has become very distracted by the elections, farmers there had taken to poppy cultivation again. It was part of a general trend across the country that what small gains had been made in reducing poppy cultivation were being reversed, because they had largely been driven by short-term incentives.
And so, I went to Marjah and hung out with these farmers and saw their opium harvest, and it was really remarkable, because, you know, I was sitting in a living room with this guy, and he brings out a basketball-sized lump of opium. And I asked him how much he was thinking he was going to sell this for. He said, you know, he hoped to sell it for $600. And I asked him, you know, &quot;Do you know how much this will be worth on the streets of Europe?&quot; And he said he didn&#8217;t. So I did a quick calculation in my head, and it worked out to over $100,000, if it was converted into heroin and sold by the gram. So, you know, $100,000 sitting on the floor of a guy without plumbing or electricity really gives you a sense of how Afghanistan, in fact, is just at one end of this vast global economy that is the international drug trade.
AMY GOODMAN : You also write about the history of U.S. involvement and CIA involvement with drug traffickers in Afghanistan. Can you talk about that?
MATTHIEU AIKINS : Yeah, well, you know, the CIA&#8217;s dirty wars that it fought in Afghanistan involved patronizing mujahideen commanders who in many cases were directly involved in the narcotics trade, people like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who was responsible for the flourishing heroin laboratory seen in Pakistani tribal areas in the 1980s; Mullah Nasim Akhundzada, who was—I already mentioned—a major drug baron in southwestern Afghanistan. These are all people who&#8217;d receive U.S.-supplied weaponry and funding.
AMY GOODMAN : And you note that the U.N. has estimated the Taliban makes hundreds of millions of dollars from taxing opium and other illicit activities. But in the summer of 2000, the country&#8217;s fundamentalist leaders actually announced a total ban on opium cultivation. What changed?
MATTHIEU AIKINS : Well, you know, the Taliban&#8217;s decision to ban poppy cultivation in 2000, which was actually remarkably successful—the only poppy that was really cultivated in the country that year was in the corner of the country still controlled by the Northern Alliance, who later became our allies. So, there&#8217;s still a lot of debate as to why the Taliban made that decision. Probably it was just a rash one based on ideological beliefs—they were against opium as an intoxicant, being forbidden in Islam—one that where they were seeking to break their international isolation and get some desperately needed development aid. But in any case, since the invasion, you know, since the war, the Taliban has found it expedient to become involved in not just drug trafficking but all sorts of illicit activities—marble and timber smuggling, contraband goods. And so, yes, the Taliban and other militant groups are definitely involved in the drug trade, and that is another reason why it&#8217;s so cancerous for the region. It funds all sorts of militant groups. But it shouldn&#8217;t be forgotten that this is something that is as much at the doorstep of the Afghan government as is the Taliban.
AMY GOODMAN : Can you tell us about Hajji Lal Jan?
MATTHIEU AIKINS : Yeah, Hajji Lal Jan is an interesting case that really highlights the limitations of the approach that we&#8217;ve tried to take to opium there. We had been—the U.S. had been supporting the specialized counternarcotics unit within the Ministry of the Interior in the hopes that this would provide the seed for Afghan efforts to go after drug trafficking, because there was sort of a decision made at the interagency level not to directly prosecute corrupt Afghan officials, because that would be too harmful to our war effort. So, the hope was the Afghans would do it themselves.
And in 2012, this major drug kingpin—he had been designated as a foreign narcotics kingpin by President Obama, but he had been living openly in Kandahar for many years, allegedly under the protection of President Karzai&#8217;s powerful half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai. So he was actually arrested by this Afghan commando unit, with international advisers. He allegedly, you know, according to court documents and prosecutors that I spoke to, he managed to escape when the raid was happening, went nearby, placed a call to Kandahar&#8217;s governor, Toryalai Wesa, on the phone. Wesa, again, allegedly, according to the wiretaps, told him that—just to sit tight, and he would call President Karzai and see what was happening. They did—then, based on that phone call, they tracked him to a second location, got him. He was taken to Kabul and put in a special counternarcotics court, where he was successfully prosecuted, convicted. It went to the appeals court. He was given 20 years in prison.
And then a sort of chain of events occurred that, for many people, highlighted just how deeply the narcotics industry reaches, you know, the highest levels of the executive and judicial branches. At the Supreme Court, his sentence was reduced to 15 years in prison. He was then transferred, after an order from the presidential palace, back to Kandahar to serve his time there. In Kandahar prison, a local court, based on an outdated provision in the Afghan criminal code that allowed for release for good behavior after nine months for sentences that were 15 years or less, ordered him to be released on parole. He immediately fled across the border to Pakistan. So, it certainly seemed to many observers like an orchestrated conspiracy to free a notorious and powerful drug trafficker who, again, allegedly was making payments both to the Afghan government and the Taliban in order to facilitate his heroin business.
AMY GOODMAN : Do you see the opium economy changing with the U.S.&#39;s changing role, though it certainly hasn&#39;t pulled out entirely?
MATTHIEU AIKINS : Unfortunately, it seems like it&#8217;s just increasing year after year. And at this point, you know, given how catastrophically things have gone—I mean, you know, of course opium was a deeply entrenched problem in Afghanistan in the year 2001, but for it to have gotten twice as bad would require some remarkable failures in policy over the last 13 years. So, given that we&#8217;ve gotten to that point, any gains, any reductions in poppy cultivation will be incremental and long-term.
It should be remembered that, one, Afghanistan—Afghan farmers only touch 1 percent of the value of the global opium trade. This is a world problem. This has to do with the fact that the world desires, people desire, millions of people desire to consume illegal drugs. We&#8217;ve made that illegal and waged a war against it, so there will always be narco-states like Afghanistan under such a system. And, two, there are huge segments of the Afghan population whose human security is dependent on poppy. You know, these are impoverished farmers in many cases. And if we pursue some brutal campaign of eradication against them, it&#8217;s going to immiserate the rural population.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, Matt, I want to thank you for being with us, George Polk Award-winning journalist, usually based in Kabul, joining us now from Halifax, Nova Scotia, in Canada. We&#8217;ll link to your recent piece in Rolling Stone , &quot;Afghanistan: The Making of a Narco State.&quot;
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we&#8217;ll be joined by a New York police officer. He says the hundreds of officers who turned their back on Mayor de Blasio as he gave his eulogy at the funeral of a slain police officer don&#8217;t represent most police officers here in New York. Stay with us. AMYGOODMAN: As the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan officially concluded its combat mission Sunday, 13 years after it started in 2001, ending the longest war in U.S. history, we continue speaking with Matt Aikins, a journalist usually based in Kabul. He’s speaking to us by Democracy Now! video stream from Halifax, Nova Scotia, in Canada. His recent article for Rolling Stone magazine is headlined "Afghanistan: The Making of a Narco State." Why don’t you lay out for us what has happened in Afghanistan around the growing of heroin, Matt Aikins?

MATTHIEUAIKINS: Sure. Well, today Afghanistan produces twice as much opium as it did in the year 2000. And this spring I traveled to Helmand province in southern Afghanistan to witness what would be the largest harvest of opium in Afghanistan’s history. It’s a record year. And all over the south, east, west and north of the country, hundreds of thousands of people were taking part in this labor-intensive opium harvest. So, what has happened in Afghanistan over the last 13 years has been the flourishing of a narco-state that really is without any parallel in history. It accounts for 15 percent of the GDP, which is more than double what cocaine accounted for at the height of Escobar-era Colombia. So, this is something that’s extraordinary, that’s catastrophic, that has grave danger for the future, and yet there’s been virtually no discussion of in recent years.

AMYGOODMAN: Who’s growing it? Who’s profiting?

MATTHIEUAIKINS: Everyone is growing it. Everyone is profiting. It touches all levels of Afghan society, both sides of the conflict, the Taliban and the government. The Taliban is definitely involved. They profit by taxing the trade, by taxing growers in their areas. But the government is even more involved. Government-linked officials are believed to earn an even higher piece of revenue from the opium trade.

AMYGOODMAN: Talk more about the involvement of the Afghanistan government. Again, quite an amazing fact that Afghanistan provides 90 percent of the opium in the world.

MATTHIEUAIKINS: Well, what’s important to remember is the history here. So, after 2001, the U.S., in its quest for vengeance against the Taliban and al-Qaeda, partnered with the very warlords whose criminality and human rights abuses had created the conditions that led to the rise of the Taliban in the first place. And in many cases, these are the same individuals who were responsible for bringing large-scale opium cultivation to Afghanistan during the war against the Soviets. When they were backed by the CIA and Pakistan’s military, they became involved in heroin trafficking and opium production.

So, for example, in Helmand, which is the most—the largest opium-producing province in Afghanistan, they brought back a member of the Akhundzada family. Karzai appointed him as governor. He was a key ally of the U.S. special forces there. And this is the same guy who had been responsible for bringing opium production to Afghanistan. So, the reason that opium has flourished in Afghanistan is because we have brought in, supported, tolerated figures who are involved in very grave criminality and in human rights abuses and in torture. And we’ve done this because it’s been deemed militarily expedient. The generals and diplomats have decided that to pursue these, you know, narrow goals of defeating the Taliban, we needed some—to support these criminals.

AMYGOODMAN: Talk about Marjah more. Talk about its going from poppy-free to what it is today.

MATTHIEUAIKINS: Yes. Well, you probably remember Marjah was the site of one of the largest battles of the war, the Battle of Marjah, where the Marines air-assaulted into this stretch of irrigated canal land, that had actually, in a rather ironic twist of history, been built by a USAID-funded project in the 1950s and ’60s as part of the Cold War rivalry with the Soviets. They built this huge canal-irrigated zone west of Helmand that brought, you know, agriculture to the desert. And that was eventually turned into a center for poppy cultivation and a bastion of the Taliban, you know, by the mid-2000s.

So the Marines air-assaulted in. There was this very televised battle. They threw the Taliban out. And for a few years, the area was indeed poppy-free. But since then, as the Marines have left, as the Afghan government has become very distracted by the elections, farmers there had taken to poppy cultivation again. It was part of a general trend across the country that what small gains had been made in reducing poppy cultivation were being reversed, because they had largely been driven by short-term incentives.

And so, I went to Marjah and hung out with these farmers and saw their opium harvest, and it was really remarkable, because, you know, I was sitting in a living room with this guy, and he brings out a basketball-sized lump of opium. And I asked him how much he was thinking he was going to sell this for. He said, you know, he hoped to sell it for $600. And I asked him, you know, "Do you know how much this will be worth on the streets of Europe?" And he said he didn’t. So I did a quick calculation in my head, and it worked out to over $100,000, if it was converted into heroin and sold by the gram. So, you know, $100,000 sitting on the floor of a guy without plumbing or electricity really gives you a sense of how Afghanistan, in fact, is just at one end of this vast global economy that is the international drug trade.

AMYGOODMAN: You also write about the history of U.S. involvement and CIA involvement with drug traffickers in Afghanistan. Can you talk about that?

MATTHIEUAIKINS: Yeah, well, you know, the CIA’s dirty wars that it fought in Afghanistan involved patronizing mujahideen commanders who in many cases were directly involved in the narcotics trade, people like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who was responsible for the flourishing heroin laboratory seen in Pakistani tribal areas in the 1980s; Mullah Nasim Akhundzada, who was—I already mentioned—a major drug baron in southwestern Afghanistan. These are all people who’d receive U.S.-supplied weaponry and funding.

AMYGOODMAN: And you note that the U.N. has estimated the Taliban makes hundreds of millions of dollars from taxing opium and other illicit activities. But in the summer of 2000, the country’s fundamentalist leaders actually announced a total ban on opium cultivation. What changed?

MATTHIEUAIKINS: Well, you know, the Taliban’s decision to ban poppy cultivation in 2000, which was actually remarkably successful—the only poppy that was really cultivated in the country that year was in the corner of the country still controlled by the Northern Alliance, who later became our allies. So, there’s still a lot of debate as to why the Taliban made that decision. Probably it was just a rash one based on ideological beliefs—they were against opium as an intoxicant, being forbidden in Islam—one that where they were seeking to break their international isolation and get some desperately needed development aid. But in any case, since the invasion, you know, since the war, the Taliban has found it expedient to become involved in not just drug trafficking but all sorts of illicit activities—marble and timber smuggling, contraband goods. And so, yes, the Taliban and other militant groups are definitely involved in the drug trade, and that is another reason why it’s so cancerous for the region. It funds all sorts of militant groups. But it shouldn’t be forgotten that this is something that is as much at the doorstep of the Afghan government as is the Taliban.

AMYGOODMAN: Can you tell us about Hajji Lal Jan?

MATTHIEUAIKINS: Yeah, Hajji Lal Jan is an interesting case that really highlights the limitations of the approach that we’ve tried to take to opium there. We had been—the U.S. had been supporting the specialized counternarcotics unit within the Ministry of the Interior in the hopes that this would provide the seed for Afghan efforts to go after drug trafficking, because there was sort of a decision made at the interagency level not to directly prosecute corrupt Afghan officials, because that would be too harmful to our war effort. So, the hope was the Afghans would do it themselves.

And in 2012, this major drug kingpin—he had been designated as a foreign narcotics kingpin by President Obama, but he had been living openly in Kandahar for many years, allegedly under the protection of President Karzai’s powerful half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai. So he was actually arrested by this Afghan commando unit, with international advisers. He allegedly, you know, according to court documents and prosecutors that I spoke to, he managed to escape when the raid was happening, went nearby, placed a call to Kandahar’s governor, Toryalai Wesa, on the phone. Wesa, again, allegedly, according to the wiretaps, told him that—just to sit tight, and he would call President Karzai and see what was happening. They did—then, based on that phone call, they tracked him to a second location, got him. He was taken to Kabul and put in a special counternarcotics court, where he was successfully prosecuted, convicted. It went to the appeals court. He was given 20 years in prison.

And then a sort of chain of events occurred that, for many people, highlighted just how deeply the narcotics industry reaches, you know, the highest levels of the executive and judicial branches. At the Supreme Court, his sentence was reduced to 15 years in prison. He was then transferred, after an order from the presidential palace, back to Kandahar to serve his time there. In Kandahar prison, a local court, based on an outdated provision in the Afghan criminal code that allowed for release for good behavior after nine months for sentences that were 15 years or less, ordered him to be released on parole. He immediately fled across the border to Pakistan. So, it certainly seemed to many observers like an orchestrated conspiracy to free a notorious and powerful drug trafficker who, again, allegedly was making payments both to the Afghan government and the Taliban in order to facilitate his heroin business.

AMYGOODMAN: Do you see the opium economy changing with the U.S.'s changing role, though it certainly hasn't pulled out entirely?

MATTHIEUAIKINS: Unfortunately, it seems like it’s just increasing year after year. And at this point, you know, given how catastrophically things have gone—I mean, you know, of course opium was a deeply entrenched problem in Afghanistan in the year 2001, but for it to have gotten twice as bad would require some remarkable failures in policy over the last 13 years. So, given that we’ve gotten to that point, any gains, any reductions in poppy cultivation will be incremental and long-term.

It should be remembered that, one, Afghanistan—Afghan farmers only touch 1 percent of the value of the global opium trade. This is a world problem. This has to do with the fact that the world desires, people desire, millions of people desire to consume illegal drugs. We’ve made that illegal and waged a war against it, so there will always be narco-states like Afghanistan under such a system. And, two, there are huge segments of the Afghan population whose human security is dependent on poppy. You know, these are impoverished farmers in many cases. And if we pursue some brutal campaign of eradication against them, it’s going to immiserate the rural population.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, Matt, I want to thank you for being with us, George Polk Award-winning journalist, usually based in Kabul, joining us now from Halifax, Nova Scotia, in Canada. We’ll link to your recent piece in Rolling Stone, "Afghanistan: The Making of a Narco State."

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we’ll be joined by a New York police officer. He says the hundreds of officers who turned their back on Mayor de Blasio as he gave his eulogy at the funeral of a slain police officer don’t represent most police officers here in New York. Stay with us.

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Mon, 29 Dec 2014 00:00:00 -0500Mike Gravel to Senator Mark Udall: Make Full Torture Probe Public Like I Did with Pentagon Papershttp://www.democracynow.org/2014/12/26/mike_gravel_to_senator_mark_udall
tag:democracynow.org,2014-12-26:en/story/87425f AMY GOODMAN : Graphic new details of the post-9/11 U.S. torture program came to light earlier this month when the Senate Intelligence Committee released a 500-page summary of its investigation into the CIA . The Senate report details a list of torture methods used on prisoners—waterboarding, sexual threats with broomsticks, medically unnecessary rectal feeding. In one case, a prisoner had his entire lunch tray of hummus, pasta and nuts puréed and administered by enema. Prisoners were threatened with buzzing power drills. Some prisoners were deprived of sleep for up to 180 hours and at times had their hands shackled above their heads.
On the Senate floor, outgoing Democratic Senator Mark Udall called for a purge of top CIA officials implicated in the torture program and cover-up, including current CIA Director John Brennan. In stark language, Udall accused the CIA of lying.
SEN . MARK UDALL : The CIA has lied to its overseers in the public, destroyed and tried to hold back evidence, spied on the Senate, made false charges against our staff, and lied about torture and the results of torture. And no one has been held to account. ... There are right now people serving in high-level positions at the agency who approved, directed or committed acts related to the CIA&#8217;s detention and interrogation program. It&#8217;s bad enough not to prosecute these officials, but to reward or promote them and risk the integrity of the U.S. government to protect them is incomprehensible. The president needs to purge his administration of high-level officials who were instrumental to the development and running of this program.
AMY GOODMAN : As outgoing Senator Mark Udall urges President Obama to fire John Brennan, Udall himself faces calls to take action of his own. The Senate findings amount to only a fraction of the full report—480 heavily redacted pages out of more than 6,000 pages in total. The White House has blocked release of the full report so far, backing the CIA&#8217;s wishes. That&#8217;s sparked demands that Udall invoke a rarely used congressional privilege and make the report public. Using the absolute free speech rights for members of Congress, the Colorado senator could read the torture report into the Congressional Record. And with his term about to expire after losing re-election, Senator Udall has not ruled that out, saying he&#8217;ll, quote, &quot;keep all options on the table.&quot;
There&#8217;s a precedent for Senator Udall to enter the torture report into the public record. In 1971, after The New York Times published portions of the Pentagon Papers, the secret history of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, the Nixon administration tried to block the release of further details. But a junior senator from Alaska named Mike Gravel insisted the public had a right to know the truth behind the war. He then put more than 4,000 pages of the 7,000-page document into the Senate record. Senator Gravel spoke to the media at the time, in 1971, about his decision.
SEN . MIKE GRAVEL : When I came into possession of these papers, I looked around, and nobody in government had done anything. The only thing that was being done in government was an effort to stifle and hide this stuff. And it just dawned on me that somebody—if we&#8217;re going to have any faith at all in our institutions, somebody from government&#8217;s got to be—got to have the same resolve, the same feelings for stopping the killing as Ellsberg did, as the Post did, as The New York Times did, as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch , as all these...
Not only myself, because the people who released this were bureaucrats. They&#8217;re all bureaucrats, the people that we disparage so often. They weren&#8217;t elected officials, they were bureaucrats. And they had much less risk than I have. The risk that I have is being expulsed from the Senate.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, today, four decades later, former senator and former presidential candidate, Mike Gravel, is among those calling on Colorado Senator Mark Udall to follow in his footsteps and enter the full Senate report on CIA torture into the Congressional Record.
Last week , Democracy Now! &#39;s Aaron Maté and I interviewed Senator Gravel. I began by asking him to outline what he&#39;s urging Senator Udall to do.
MIKE GRAVEL : Well, he may have the opportunity getting his hands on the full report. He doesn&#8217;t have to read it into the Senate record. It&#8217;s already in the Senate record, because it&#8217;s the record of a committee. So you don&#8217;t have to duplicate that. What he has to do is exercise the speech and debate clause, take this record of 6,000 pages, put a press release describing why he&#8217;s doing it, and release it to the public. It&#8217;s that simple.
Most members of Congress, unfortunately, don&#8217;t fully understand that there&#8217;s three functions that representatives have to perform. One is to inform the public. Two is to legislate. And three is to have oversight. And so, what we have with the release of this document, or the summary, was an oversight. This is—they conducted oversight, and they released it to the public. Madison, Jefferson, James Wilson, George Washington all felt—all felt the most important function of representation was to inform the people as to what their government is doing. And so, this is all that the Feinstein committee has done thus far, but we need to see the entire record so that it could be probed.
AMY GOODMAN : Senator Gravel, have you spoken to Mark Udall?
MIKE GRAVEL : No, I haven&#8217;t. I had a situation earlier this year where Senator Wyden was going to call me, and, of course, he didn&#8217;t. And it was on this subject. And so, I felt—
AMY GOODMAN : In fact, it doesn&#8217;t just have to be Udall. You&#8217;re saying Udall, as he&#8217;s the outgoing senator. But why not, for example, Senator Wyden?
MIKE GRAVEL : Yeah, there&#8217;s no risk at all. There&#8217;s not even political risk, because he&#8217;s stated on the floor, and privately, that he would like to spend a major portion of his time out of office going after this secrecy problem and going after torture and revealing that. Well, the best way to do that right now is to reveal the entire study before January. In that way, he can mine that, and so can scholars and reporters mine it throughout. Keep in mind that Snowden made moot the issue of members of the Intelligence Committee releasing what the NSA was doing. But they knew it. They talked about it internally. But they never said anything about it publicly. And the only thing that binds them is peer pressure. Now, when the Republicans say they&#8217;re going to stop them, they can&#8217;t—unless you could physically assault them, they can&#8217;t stop them.
But the key is to get the document and hand it out to the public. He&#8217;s got the right to do this under the Constitution of the United States, which has been sustained. That action has been sustained by the unanimous agreement of the Supreme Court of the United States. And so, that&#8217;s the Constitution, case law of the Supreme Court. There&#8217;s no risk in doing this. But there&#8217;s also much to be gained from it, because then we can begin to hold elements of our government accountable for the unbelievable debasement of our morality.
AMY GOODMAN : That&#8217;s former Senator Mike Gravel speaking on Democracy Now! AMYGOODMAN: Graphic new details of the post-9/11 U.S. torture program came to light earlier this month when the Senate Intelligence Committee released a 500-page summary of its investigation into the CIA. The Senate report details a list of torture methods used on prisoners—waterboarding, sexual threats with broomsticks, medically unnecessary rectal feeding. In one case, a prisoner had his entire lunch tray of hummus, pasta and nuts puréed and administered by enema. Prisoners were threatened with buzzing power drills. Some prisoners were deprived of sleep for up to 180 hours and at times had their hands shackled above their heads.

On the Senate floor, outgoing Democratic Senator Mark Udall called for a purge of top CIA officials implicated in the torture program and cover-up, including current CIA Director John Brennan. In stark language, Udall accused the CIA of lying.

SEN. MARKUDALL: The CIA has lied to its overseers in the public, destroyed and tried to hold back evidence, spied on the Senate, made false charges against our staff, and lied about torture and the results of torture. And no one has been held to account. ... There are right now people serving in high-level positions at the agency who approved, directed or committed acts related to the CIA’s detention and interrogation program. It’s bad enough not to prosecute these officials, but to reward or promote them and risk the integrity of the U.S. government to protect them is incomprehensible. The president needs to purge his administration of high-level officials who were instrumental to the development and running of this program.

AMYGOODMAN: As outgoing Senator Mark Udall urges President Obama to fire John Brennan, Udall himself faces calls to take action of his own. The Senate findings amount to only a fraction of the full report—480 heavily redacted pages out of more than 6,000 pages in total. The White House has blocked release of the full report so far, backing the CIA’s wishes. That’s sparked demands that Udall invoke a rarely used congressional privilege and make the report public. Using the absolute free speech rights for members of Congress, the Colorado senator could read the torture report into the Congressional Record. And with his term about to expire after losing re-election, Senator Udall has not ruled that out, saying he’ll, quote, "keep all options on the table."

There’s a precedent for Senator Udall to enter the torture report into the public record. In 1971, after The New York Times published portions of the Pentagon Papers, the secret history of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, the Nixon administration tried to block the release of further details. But a junior senator from Alaska named Mike Gravel insisted the public had a right to know the truth behind the war. He then put more than 4,000 pages of the 7,000-page document into the Senate record. Senator Gravel spoke to the media at the time, in 1971, about his decision.

SEN. MIKEGRAVEL: When I came into possession of these papers, I looked around, and nobody in government had done anything. The only thing that was being done in government was an effort to stifle and hide this stuff. And it just dawned on me that somebody—if we’re going to have any faith at all in our institutions, somebody from government’s got to be—got to have the same resolve, the same feelings for stopping the killing as Ellsberg did, as the Post did, as The New York Times did, as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, as all these...

Not only myself, because the people who released this were bureaucrats. They’re all bureaucrats, the people that we disparage so often. They weren’t elected officials, they were bureaucrats. And they had much less risk than I have. The risk that I have is being expulsed from the Senate.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, today, four decades later, former senator and former presidential candidate, Mike Gravel, is among those calling on Colorado Senator Mark Udall to follow in his footsteps and enter the full Senate report on CIA torture into the Congressional Record.

Last week, Democracy Now!'s Aaron Maté and I interviewed Senator Gravel. I began by asking him to outline what he's urging Senator Udall to do.

MIKEGRAVEL: Well, he may have the opportunity getting his hands on the full report. He doesn’t have to read it into the Senate record. It’s already in the Senate record, because it’s the record of a committee. So you don’t have to duplicate that. What he has to do is exercise the speech and debate clause, take this record of 6,000 pages, put a press release describing why he’s doing it, and release it to the public. It’s that simple.

Most members of Congress, unfortunately, don’t fully understand that there’s three functions that representatives have to perform. One is to inform the public. Two is to legislate. And three is to have oversight. And so, what we have with the release of this document, or the summary, was an oversight. This is—they conducted oversight, and they released it to the public. Madison, Jefferson, James Wilson, George Washington all felt—all felt the most important function of representation was to inform the people as to what their government is doing. And so, this is all that the Feinstein committee has done thus far, but we need to see the entire record so that it could be probed.

AMYGOODMAN: Senator Gravel, have you spoken to Mark Udall?

MIKEGRAVEL: No, I haven’t. I had a situation earlier this year where Senator Wyden was going to call me, and, of course, he didn’t. And it was on this subject. And so, I felt—

AMYGOODMAN: In fact, it doesn’t just have to be Udall. You’re saying Udall, as he’s the outgoing senator. But why not, for example, Senator Wyden?

MIKEGRAVEL: Yeah, there’s no risk at all. There’s not even political risk, because he’s stated on the floor, and privately, that he would like to spend a major portion of his time out of office going after this secrecy problem and going after torture and revealing that. Well, the best way to do that right now is to reveal the entire study before January. In that way, he can mine that, and so can scholars and reporters mine it throughout. Keep in mind that Snowden made moot the issue of members of the Intelligence Committee releasing what the NSA was doing. But they knew it. They talked about it internally. But they never said anything about it publicly. And the only thing that binds them is peer pressure. Now, when the Republicans say they’re going to stop them, they can’t—unless you could physically assault them, they can’t stop them.

But the key is to get the document and hand it out to the public. He’s got the right to do this under the Constitution of the United States, which has been sustained. That action has been sustained by the unanimous agreement of the Supreme Court of the United States. And so, that’s the Constitution, case law of the Supreme Court. There’s no risk in doing this. But there’s also much to be gained from it, because then we can begin to hold elements of our government accountable for the unbelievable debasement of our morality.

]]>
Fri, 26 Dec 2014 00:00:00 -0500Will Guantánamo Ever Close? U.S. Frees More Prisoners, But Dozens Remain Behind Barshttp://www.democracynow.org/2014/12/24/will_guantanamo_ever_close_us_frees
tag:democracynow.org,2014-12-24:en/story/ca9309 JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The United States has released four Afghan prisoners from Guantánamo Bay. The four men will all return to Afghanistan, where they&#8217;ll apparently be able to live without restriction. Earlier this month, six other Guantánamo prisoners were sent to Uruguay, four years after they were first approved for release. Their transfer was the largest for a single group of Guantánamo prisoners since 2009.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration&#8217;s envoy for the effort to close Guantánamo Bay has resigned—Clifford Sloan, a Washington lawyer. He headed the State Department&#8217;s Office of Guantánamo Closure for 18 months.
Speaking to CNN on Sunday, President Obama said he will do everything he can to close Guantánamo.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA : I&#8217;m going to be doing everything I can to close it. It is—it is something that continues to inspire jihadists and extremists around the world, the fact that these folks are being held. It is contrary to our values. And it is wildly expensive. … We need to close that facility, and I&#8217;m going to do everything I can.
AMY GOODMAN : With the latest release, there are 132 prisoners left at Guantánamo.
To talk more about the significance of this, we&#8217;re now joined by Pardiss Kebriaei, senior staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Welcome to Democracy Now!
PARDISS KEBRIAEI : Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN : So there have been these series of two groups who have been released from Guantánamo. Talk about their significance.
PARDISS KEBRIAEI : Right. So, all of these men were held for over a decade, for 12, 13 years, without charge. They were all approved for release by the Obama administration in 2009. The four men who went to Afghanistan had spent half of their imprisonment at Guantánamo waiting for release.
The significance, I think, is—you know, in terms of Uruguay in particular, it&#8217;s the first Latin American country, the first country in South America, to come forward and offer safe haven to men who need it in order to leave Guantánamo. President Mujica has really emphasized the fact that he&#8217;s doing this as a humanitarian gesture. He, himself, obviously, was a political prisoner for 14 years, was in isolation. So I think his expressions of support, the fact that Uruguay has come forward and taken six men—he released a letter from the State Department stating that the United States did not have enough information that these men were involved in conducting or facilitating terrorist activities. So I think this, for the region, is important.
And then I think we hope that there is more of an opening for more countries in South America and in the region to come forward and take the additional men who remain. There are 64 men, of the 132 still at Guantánamo, who have been approved for release, most of whom since 2009. So it is absolutely past time for these men to go home. We are now approaching the 13th year anniversary of Guantánamo. January 11th will be the beginning of the 14th year that these men have been in prison. So it is time—it&#8217;s past time to close it.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, in an interview, outgoing Uruguayan President José Mujica said he agreed to receive the six prisoners out of his long-standing opposition to Guantánamo Bay.
PRESIDENT JOSÉ MUJICA : [translated] That isn&#8217;t a prison. It&#8217;s a kidnapping den, because a prison entails subjection to some system of law, the presence of some sort of prosecutor, the decision of some judge—whomever that may be—and a minimal point of reference from a judicial point of view. Guantánamo has nothing.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was outgoing Uruguayan President Mujica. But earlier this month, Abd al Hadi described his new life. He&#8217;s one of the folks released there in Uruguay.
ABD AL HADI OMAR MAHMOUD FARAJ : [translated] Uruguay is a beautiful country. The Spanish class here is good, and I study two hours every day. I can speak a little Spanish, and I know how to say &quot;Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday.&quot;
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Pardiss, this whole issue of Sloan resigning, could you talk about that? And there&#8217;s been speculation that he was very unhappy with the pace of the releases, especially with the responses of the Defense Department to releasing the men in Guantánamo.
PARDISS KEBRIAEI : Sure. And just on that point of the video you just showed, I mean, I think it is very important to note that the American public never has direct exposure to the men themselves. And I think that if we were to have that kind of exposure—and there are citizens of most of the world, of the rest of the world, that interact with former detainees, who can go to panel discussions and hear them talk about their imprisonment, who can have that exposure firsthand. We never get that here in the United States. And I think that really—that&#8217;s one of the reasons why I think these myths about who we have held and the fear mongering that continues to happen is allowed to continue. So, that&#8217;s just—you know, it&#8217;s important to note.
As far as Sloan, you know, I don&#8217;t know that we really have much insight into why he resigned. I think the point is that the administration needs to fill that position immediately. He&#8217;s played a critical role. That position has a critical role. It&#8217;s the special envoy, the person tasked with negotiating transfers. He was appointed by President Obama after the hunger strike, if you remember, in 2013, after a couple of years where that office had been closed. Since Sloan had been in his position, there have been nearly—there have been nearly two dozen transfers. So, the pace of transfers has been what we—what should be happening, what we expect to continue to be happening. And the administration absolutely needs to fill that position immediately.
AMY GOODMAN : I want to turn to comments that President Obama made about Guantánamo while speaking to Candy Crowley on her last show on CNN over the weekend.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA : There are a little less than 150 individuals left in this facility. We are going to continue to place those who have been cleared for release or transfer to host countries that are willing to take them. There&#8217;s going to be a certain irreducible number that are going to be really hard cases, because, you know, we know they&#8217;ve done something wrong, and they are still dangerous, but it&#8217;s difficult to mount the evidence in a traditional Article III court. And so, we&#8217;re going to have to wrestle with that. But we need to close that facility, and I&#8217;m going to do everything I can.
AMY GOODMAN : So, President Obama, one of his first acts in office as president, way back in 2009, was to close Guantánamo. Congress opposed it. What can he do? I mean, he&#8217;s done a lot on other issues right now, on the issue of immigration, for example. What can he do on Guantánamo?
PARDISS KEBRIAEI : He can continue this pace of transfers until all of the men, not just those who are cleared right now, but all of the men the administration does not intend to charge are released. He has the authority under Congress right now. There are countries coming forward to resettle men. There are a number of men—it&#8217;s important to be clear that this is now largely a prison for Yemeni detainees. Over 80 of the 132 who are still there are from Yemen. Some of those men want to go home. They should be able to go home. The administration has said that it&#8217;s going to review cases, individual cases, case by case. It should be looking at the specific circumstances of each of those people and determining whether some of them can go home. Some of them, frankly, want to go to third countries, and they should be resettled. And there are now countries coming forward to do that.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But what can be done about that specific Yemeni situation, where obviously the government in Yemen, given the continuing strife there, is hardly in a position to say, &quot;Well, we&#8217;re going to take all these guys back&quot;?
PARDISS KEBRIAEI : Well, I mean, I think there is—there is a certain number. Of the 64 who&#8217;ve been cleared, 55 are Yemeni. These are men the administration has determined do not pose the kind of threat that would require them to continue to be detained at Guantánamo. There is also this myth that all of the people at Guantánamo were ever engaging in terrorism to begin with. So the idea that they would—there&#8217;s a risk of returning to the battlefield is just—is false. So we need to be clear about that. There are administration officials themselves who said—the former commander—a former commander of Guantánamo said, easily, a third of the men there should not have been there, were mistakes. They later changed that to half of the men. So there is a history and a facts—you know, facts that we need to be clear about in terms of who we have held there.
AMY GOODMAN : And finally, Pardiss, you know, it&#8217;s quite amazing, in the last few weeks, these historic developments, the U.S. and Cuba normalizing relations. For the U.S. to have this piece of land, what, rent it from Cuba, you would think since the U.S. has imposed this embargo for more than 50 years, what they&#8217;d want to do with that piece of land is show Cuba what they believe, what the U.S. government believes democracy should look like, should be conducted like. Instead, they have this prison there—
PARDISS KEBRIAEI : Absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN : —where they&#8217;ve tortured and held men.
PARDISS KEBRIAEI : Absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN : Many of them have been cleared for more than a decade.
PARDISS KEBRIAEI : Absolutely. And in the context of discussion right now about accountability for torture, I think it&#8217;s also important to note and be clear that when the U.S. releases people and sends them home, there is never a moment of acknowledgment of wrongdoing for having held them for 12, 13 years without charge and having tortured them. And we know that torture has happened, not just in CIA black sites, but in military prisons like Guantánamo.
AMY GOODMAN : Should the U.S. give Guantánamo back to—this whole area, Guantánamo Bay, to Cuba?
PARDISS KEBRIAEI : I think it should. But a first step would be closing the prison—and closing it the right way, not whittling the number of prisoners down to some palatable number for the U.S. public and transferring them to prisons in the United States.
AMY GOODMAN : Pardiss Kebriaei, I want to thank you for being with us, senior staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights. When we come back, an unhappy Christmas story. A woman who gets in a cab in a small island nation called East Timor ends up in prison. We&#8217;ll find out why. And then a remarkable Christmas story, as a prisoner returning to Cuba sees his wife for the first time, gets to hold her for the first time, in years. She&#8217;s about to give birth to a baby in about two weeks. Stay with us. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The United States has released four Afghan prisoners from Guantánamo Bay. The four men will all return to Afghanistan, where they’ll apparently be able to live without restriction. Earlier this month, six other Guantánamo prisoners were sent to Uruguay, four years after they were first approved for release. Their transfer was the largest for a single group of Guantánamo prisoners since 2009.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration’s envoy for the effort to close Guantánamo Bay has resigned—Clifford Sloan, a Washington lawyer. He headed the State Department’s Office of Guantánamo Closure for 18 months.

Speaking to CNN on Sunday, President Obama said he will do everything he can to close Guantánamo.

PRESIDENTBARACKOBAMA: I’m going to be doing everything I can to close it. It is—it is something that continues to inspire jihadists and extremists around the world, the fact that these folks are being held. It is contrary to our values. And it is wildly expensive. … We need to close that facility, and I’m going to do everything I can.

AMYGOODMAN: With the latest release, there are 132 prisoners left at Guantánamo.

To talk more about the significance of this, we’re now joined by Pardiss Kebriaei, senior staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

PARDISSKEBRIAEI: Thank you.

AMYGOODMAN: So there have been these series of two groups who have been released from Guantánamo. Talk about their significance.

PARDISSKEBRIAEI: Right. So, all of these men were held for over a decade, for 12, 13 years, without charge. They were all approved for release by the Obama administration in 2009. The four men who went to Afghanistan had spent half of their imprisonment at Guantánamo waiting for release.

The significance, I think, is—you know, in terms of Uruguay in particular, it’s the first Latin American country, the first country in South America, to come forward and offer safe haven to men who need it in order to leave Guantánamo. President Mujica has really emphasized the fact that he’s doing this as a humanitarian gesture. He, himself, obviously, was a political prisoner for 14 years, was in isolation. So I think his expressions of support, the fact that Uruguay has come forward and taken six men—he released a letter from the State Department stating that the United States did not have enough information that these men were involved in conducting or facilitating terrorist activities. So I think this, for the region, is important.

And then I think we hope that there is more of an opening for more countries in South America and in the region to come forward and take the additional men who remain. There are 64 men, of the 132 still at Guantánamo, who have been approved for release, most of whom since 2009. So it is absolutely past time for these men to go home. We are now approaching the 13th year anniversary of Guantánamo. January 11th will be the beginning of the 14th year that these men have been in prison. So it is time—it’s past time to close it.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, in an interview, outgoing Uruguayan President José Mujica said he agreed to receive the six prisoners out of his long-standing opposition to Guantánamo Bay.

PRESIDENT JOSÉ MUJICA: [translated] That isn’t a prison. It’s a kidnapping den, because a prison entails subjection to some system of law, the presence of some sort of prosecutor, the decision of some judge—whomever that may be—and a minimal point of reference from a judicial point of view. Guantánamo has nothing.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was outgoing Uruguayan President Mujica. But earlier this month, Abd al Hadi described his new life. He’s one of the folks released there in Uruguay.

ABD AL HADIOMARMAHMOUDFARAJ: [translated] Uruguay is a beautiful country. The Spanish class here is good, and I study two hours every day. I can speak a little Spanish, and I know how to say "Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday."

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Pardiss, this whole issue of Sloan resigning, could you talk about that? And there’s been speculation that he was very unhappy with the pace of the releases, especially with the responses of the Defense Department to releasing the men in Guantánamo.

PARDISSKEBRIAEI: Sure. And just on that point of the video you just showed, I mean, I think it is very important to note that the American public never has direct exposure to the men themselves. And I think that if we were to have that kind of exposure—and there are citizens of most of the world, of the rest of the world, that interact with former detainees, who can go to panel discussions and hear them talk about their imprisonment, who can have that exposure firsthand. We never get that here in the United States. And I think that really—that’s one of the reasons why I think these myths about who we have held and the fear mongering that continues to happen is allowed to continue. So, that’s just—you know, it’s important to note.

As far as Sloan, you know, I don’t know that we really have much insight into why he resigned. I think the point is that the administration needs to fill that position immediately. He’s played a critical role. That position has a critical role. It’s the special envoy, the person tasked with negotiating transfers. He was appointed by President Obama after the hunger strike, if you remember, in 2013, after a couple of years where that office had been closed. Since Sloan had been in his position, there have been nearly—there have been nearly two dozen transfers. So, the pace of transfers has been what we—what should be happening, what we expect to continue to be happening. And the administration absolutely needs to fill that position immediately.

AMYGOODMAN: I want to turn to comments that President Obama made about Guantánamo while speaking to Candy Crowley on her last show on CNN over the weekend.

PRESIDENTBARACKOBAMA: There are a little less than 150 individuals left in this facility. We are going to continue to place those who have been cleared for release or transfer to host countries that are willing to take them. There’s going to be a certain irreducible number that are going to be really hard cases, because, you know, we know they’ve done something wrong, and they are still dangerous, but it’s difficult to mount the evidence in a traditional Article III court. And so, we’re going to have to wrestle with that. But we need to close that facility, and I’m going to do everything I can.

AMYGOODMAN: So, President Obama, one of his first acts in office as president, way back in 2009, was to close Guantánamo. Congress opposed it. What can he do? I mean, he’s done a lot on other issues right now, on the issue of immigration, for example. What can he do on Guantánamo?

PARDISSKEBRIAEI: He can continue this pace of transfers until all of the men, not just those who are cleared right now, but all of the men the administration does not intend to charge are released. He has the authority under Congress right now. There are countries coming forward to resettle men. There are a number of men—it’s important to be clear that this is now largely a prison for Yemeni detainees. Over 80 of the 132 who are still there are from Yemen. Some of those men want to go home. They should be able to go home. The administration has said that it’s going to review cases, individual cases, case by case. It should be looking at the specific circumstances of each of those people and determining whether some of them can go home. Some of them, frankly, want to go to third countries, and they should be resettled. And there are now countries coming forward to do that.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But what can be done about that specific Yemeni situation, where obviously the government in Yemen, given the continuing strife there, is hardly in a position to say, "Well, we’re going to take all these guys back"?

PARDISSKEBRIAEI: Well, I mean, I think there is—there is a certain number. Of the 64 who’ve been cleared, 55 are Yemeni. These are men the administration has determined do not pose the kind of threat that would require them to continue to be detained at Guantánamo. There is also this myth that all of the people at Guantánamo were ever engaging in terrorism to begin with. So the idea that they would—there’s a risk of returning to the battlefield is just—is false. So we need to be clear about that. There are administration officials themselves who said—the former commander—a former commander of Guantánamo said, easily, a third of the men there should not have been there, were mistakes. They later changed that to half of the men. So there is a history and a facts—you know, facts that we need to be clear about in terms of who we have held there.

AMYGOODMAN: And finally, Pardiss, you know, it’s quite amazing, in the last few weeks, these historic developments, the U.S. and Cuba normalizing relations. For the U.S. to have this piece of land, what, rent it from Cuba, you would think since the U.S. has imposed this embargo for more than 50 years, what they’d want to do with that piece of land is show Cuba what they believe, what the U.S. government believes democracy should look like, should be conducted like. Instead, they have this prison there—

PARDISSKEBRIAEI: Absolutely.

AMYGOODMAN: —where they’ve tortured and held men.

PARDISSKEBRIAEI: Absolutely.

AMYGOODMAN: Many of them have been cleared for more than a decade.

PARDISSKEBRIAEI: Absolutely. And in the context of discussion right now about accountability for torture, I think it’s also important to note and be clear that when the U.S. releases people and sends them home, there is never a moment of acknowledgment of wrongdoing for having held them for 12, 13 years without charge and having tortured them. And we know that torture has happened, not just in CIA black sites, but in military prisons like Guantánamo.

AMYGOODMAN: Should the U.S. give Guantánamo back to—this whole area, Guantánamo Bay, to Cuba?

PARDISSKEBRIAEI: I think it should. But a first step would be closing the prison—and closing it the right way, not whittling the number of prisoners down to some palatable number for the U.S. public and transferring them to prisons in the United States.

AMYGOODMAN: Pardiss Kebriaei, I want to thank you for being with us, senior staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights. When we come back, an unhappy Christmas story. A woman who gets in a cab in a small island nation called East Timor ends up in prison. We’ll find out why. And then a remarkable Christmas story, as a prisoner returning to Cuba sees his wife for the first time, gets to hold her for the first time, in years. She’s about to give birth to a baby in about two weeks. Stay with us.

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Wed, 24 Dec 2014 00:00:00 -0500Should Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld & CIA Officials Be Tried for Torture? War Crimes Case Filed in Germanyhttp://www.democracynow.org/2014/12/19/should_bush_and_cheney_be_tried
tag:democracynow.org,2014-12-19:en/story/212fd3 JUAN GONZÁLEZ: A human rights group in Berlin, Germany, has filed a criminal complaint against the architects of the George W. Bush administration&#8217;s torture program. The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights has accused former Bush administration officials, including CIA Director George Tenet and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, of war crimes, and called for an immediate investigation by a German prosecutor. The move follows the release of a Senate report on CIA torture, which includes the case of a German citizen, Khalid El-Masri, who was captured by CIA agents in 2004 due to mistaken identity and tortured at a secret prison in Afghanistan. So far, no one involved in the CIA torture program has been charged with a crime—except the whistleblower John Kiriakou, who exposed it.
AMY GOODMAN : In a statement earlier this week, Wolfgang Kaleck, general secretary of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, said, &quot;By investigating members of the Bush administration, Germany can help to ensure that those responsible for abduction, abuse and illegal detention do not go unpunished,&quot; unquote.
Meanwhile, President Obama is standing by his long-standing refusal to investigate or prosecute Bush administration officials for the torture program. In a statement, he called on the nation not to, quote, &quot;refight old arguments.&quot; As Obama continues to reject a criminal probe of Bush-era torture, former Vice President Dick Cheney has said he would do it all again. Cheney spoke to NBC&#8217;s Meet the Press Sunday.
DICK CHENEY : With respect to trying to define that as torture, I come back to the proposition torture was what the al-Qaeda terrorists did to 3,000 Americans on 9/11. There is no comparison between that and what we did with respect to enhanced interrogation. ... It worked. It worked now. For 13 years we&#8217;ve avoided another mass casualty attack against the United States. We did capture bin Laden. We did capture an awful lot of the senior guys of al-Qaeda who were responsible for that attack on 9/11. I&#8217;d do it again in a minute.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Cheney&#8217;s claim that he would approve torture again highlights a key question: Are top officials above the law, and will the impunity of today lead to more abuses in the future? The question spans a wide chain of command from Cheney, President Bush and other White House officials, who kickstarted the torture program after 9/11; to the lawyers in the Justice Department, who drafted the memos providing legal cover; to the CIA officials, who implemented the abuses and misled Congress and the public; and to the military psychologists, who helped devise the techniques inflicted on prisoners at U.S. military prisons and secret black sites across the globe.
AMY GOODMAN : To talk more about this, we&#8217;re joined now by two guests. Michael Ratner is back with us, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, chair of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights. CCR has been working with the European Center to file criminal complaints against Bush administration officials complicit in the use of torture. He&#8217;s also the author of The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book .
Martin Garbus is also back with us, one of the leading attorneys in the U.S. Time magazine calls him &quot;one of the best trial lawyers in the country.&quot; National Law Journal has named him one of the country&#8217;s top 10 litigators.
We welcome you both back to Democracy Now! Yesterday we were talking to you both about Cuba; today we&#8217;re talking about all the news that has come out. Martin Garbus, should President Bush, should George Tenet, should Donald Rumsfeld, should Dick Cheney be put on trial for torture?
MARTIN GARBUS : They should be. The bad thing about it is they all have a defense they can rely on: They have the defense of the lawyers&#8217; opinions that were given to them—the opinions of Gonzales, Bybee and John Yoo. And unless you can pierce those decisions, you have a very tough time. It seems to me a prosecution that ends badly—and I think it would end badly in the United States—might not be one that will be brought. But what should happen is with respect to those lawyers. When Jay Bybee was elected to the court of appeals in 2002—was nominated and then voted upon by the Senate—and John Yoo presently teaches at Berkeley university. At the—
AMY GOODMAN : At University of California, Berkeley, law school.
MARTIN GARBUS : California. At the time that Yoo was appointed to Berkeley, there was a mass demonstration of students against him. At the time that Bybee was nominated for the judgeship by Bush, he was criticized, but you did not yet have all this information. What Senator Leahy has said, that if you had all this information, Jay Bybee never would have passed. Clearly, if you had all this information that you have now, John Yoo wouldn&#8217;t be appointed. What should happen is there should be complaints filed in the bar associations. They should be suspended and disbarred. Then, perhaps, if you have a prosecution, you already have established the faultiness, the horrific faultiness, of the legal opinions. So it seems to me, at least in this country, a condition precedent, as we lawyers say, before you can have a prosecution, has to be the invalidation of the legal opinions.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And—
MICHAEL RATNER : I want to just say, I&#8217;m not here to debate Marty on this. And he&#8217;s a defense lawyer. But I strongly disagree that Bush, Cheney, et al., would have a defense. This wasn&#8217;t like these memos just appeared independently from the Justice Department. These memos were facilitated by the very people—Cheney, etc.—who we believe should be indicted. This was part of a conspiracy so they could get away with torture. But that&#8217;s not the subject here now. I just want to—so, that is clear to me.
Secondly, whatever we think of those memos, they&#8217;re of uselessness in Europe. Europe doesn&#8217;t accept this, quote, &quot;golden shield&quot; of a legal defense. Either it&#8217;s torture or it&#8217;s not. Either you did it or you didn&#8217;t. And that&#8217;s one of the reasons, among others, why we&#8217;re going to Europe and why we went to Europe to bring these cases through the European Center.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But I wanted to ask you about that, because—as the clip we played of President Obama saying it&#8217;s no use refighting old arguments, but you are in essence refighting arguments in Europe that the United States refuses to deal with.
MICHAEL RATNER : But, of course, you know, Cheney just showed us exactly why you have to—have to prosecute torture. Because if you don&#8217;t prosecute it, the next guy down the line is going to torture again. And that&#8217;s what Cheney said: &quot;I would do it again.&quot;
And now, the European case is really interesting. We did try this in 2004—you covered it here. We tried it in 2006—you covered it here. But now, because of the Senate report, we have a much stronger case in Germany than we ever had, particularly with regard to a German citizen, Khalid El-Masri, who was taken off the streets of Macedonia, sent to the Salt Pit, which is known as Cobalt in the Senate report.
AMY GOODMAN : Wait, explain, though.
MICHAEL RATNER : Yeah, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN : Tell us that story. It&#8217;s a remarkable story. He was on a bus?
MICHAEL RATNER : He was on a bus to take a vacation in Skopje in Macedonia, and he gets pulled off by agents of our government, gets taken off the bus, gets, you know, sodomized, essentially, with a drug, and then gets taken from there to the Salt Pit in Afghanistan, which is a CIA black site torture center, known as Cobalt in the report. He&#8217;s there for four months. Everybody knows by—at some point along, this is a mistake. There was another guy with a similar name. It wasn&#8217;t this guy. Even after they&#8217;re told that it&#8217;s a mistake, they leave him in there, and they leave him to be tortured. They finally, at the end of this, just take him out of there, and they drop him off somewhere—
AMY GOODMAN : Condoleezza Rice was involved with this, right?
MICHAEL RATNER : Condoleezza Rice, and so was this woman—
AMY GOODMAN : They held him further because they realized they had been torturing the wrong man.
MICHAEL RATNER : That&#8217;s correct. And the European Court of Human Rights actually weighed in on this case. And what they did is they held Macedonia liable for allowing that kidnapping on their streets, and fined them. And they found that what happened to him on the streets of Macedonia was torture. So—
AMY GOODMAN : Who else was involved?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, we—I want to go to Khalid El-Masri in his own words, describing his time inside a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan.
KHALID EL- MASRI : [translated] I was the only one in this prison in Kabul who was actually treated slightly better than the other inmates. But it was known among the prisoners that other prisoners were constantly tortured with blasts of loud music, exposed to constant onslaughts of loud music. And they were—for up to five days, they were just sort of left hanging from the ceiling, completely naked in ice-cold conditions. The man from Tanzania, whom I mentioned before, had his arm broken in three places. He had injuries, trauma to the head, and his teeth had been damaged. They also locked him up in a suitcase for long periods of time, foul-smelling suitcase that made him vomit all the time. Other people experienced forms of torture whereby their heads were being pushed down and held under water.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was Khalid El-Masri describing his torture in a CIA black site. Michael?
MICHAEL RATNER : Well, yes, and they knew he was innocent. And there&#8217;s a woman who was just identified—who has been identified for a long time, who works for the CIA . Her name is Bikowsky, Alfreda Frances Bikowsky, who apparently was one of the people who insisted, even though there was people in the agency saying that &quot;We&#8217;ve got the wrong guy,&quot; who insisted on having him picked up and taken there. She&#8217;s also, apparently, one of the models for the woman in Zero Dark Thirty . And Jane Mayer recently wrote an article about her; it&#8217;s, I think, called &quot;The Queen of Torture&quot; or something like that [&quot;The Unidentified Queen of Torture&quot;]—didn&#8217;t identify her by name. But she is one of the defendants in the lawsuit in Germany.
And let me just say, Germany—whatever happened before, between the NSA spying on Germany and the fact that their citizen has now been revealed to have been kept in a torture place, when it was known that he was innocent, I&#8217;m pretty sure that Germany is going to take this very seriously.
And I just spoke to a person you&#8217;ve had on here before, Scott Horton, who&#8217;s the columnist for Harper&#8217;s , as well as an expert on national security, and Scott tells me that because of these cases we have filed in Europe, that over a hundred CIA agents have been given advice that they should not leave the United States. Let me just say, what we&#8217;re going to win here in the end, I can&#8217;t say, but that already to me is a major victory.
MARTIN GARBUS : A major victory would be to prosecute the lawyers themselves—
AMY GOODMAN : Martin Garbus.
MARTIN GARBUS : —because otherwise what&#8217;s going to happen in the future is you&#8217;re going to have activities, like Cheney or whomever, you&#8217;ll have people in the CIA and the NSA relying on faulty legal opinion. So I think a strong emphasis in the United States has to be stop future lawyers from doing the same thing as was done here.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And your point is that these memos, they consciously knew that they were violating torture statutes.
MARTIN GARBUS : They consciously knew. And I think Michael is right, of course, that they were doing it under the chain of command—Cheney and the other people. But I think that&#8217;s very difficult to prove, and I think you should go after the lawyers immediately now.
AMY GOODMAN : And, of course, since that time, John Yoo is an eminent professor at University of California, Berkeley, law school, and Bybee—
MARTIN GARBUS : Jay Bybee is a respected federal judge. &quot;Respected.&quot;
AMY GOODMAN : —was elevated to a judgeship. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: A human rights group in Berlin, Germany, has filed a criminal complaint against the architects of the George W. Bush administration’s torture program. The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights has accused former Bush administration officials, including CIA Director George Tenet and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, of war crimes, and called for an immediate investigation by a German prosecutor. The move follows the release of a Senate report on CIA torture, which includes the case of a German citizen, Khalid El-Masri, who was captured by CIA agents in 2004 due to mistaken identity and tortured at a secret prison in Afghanistan. So far, no one involved in the CIA torture program has been charged with a crime—except the whistleblower John Kiriakou, who exposed it.

AMYGOODMAN: In a statement earlier this week, Wolfgang Kaleck, general secretary of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, said, "By investigating members of the Bush administration, Germany can help to ensure that those responsible for abduction, abuse and illegal detention do not go unpunished," unquote.

Meanwhile, President Obama is standing by his long-standing refusal to investigate or prosecute Bush administration officials for the torture program. In a statement, he called on the nation not to, quote, "refight old arguments." As Obama continues to reject a criminal probe of Bush-era torture, former Vice President Dick Cheney has said he would do it all again. Cheney spoke to NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday.

DICKCHENEY: With respect to trying to define that as torture, I come back to the proposition torture was what the al-Qaeda terrorists did to 3,000 Americans on 9/11. There is no comparison between that and what we did with respect to enhanced interrogation. ... It worked. It worked now. For 13 years we’ve avoided another mass casualty attack against the United States. We did capture bin Laden. We did capture an awful lot of the senior guys of al-Qaeda who were responsible for that attack on 9/11. I’d do it again in a minute.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Cheney’s claim that he would approve torture again highlights a key question: Are top officials above the law, and will the impunity of today lead to more abuses in the future? The question spans a wide chain of command from Cheney, President Bush and other White House officials, who kickstarted the torture program after 9/11; to the lawyers in the Justice Department, who drafted the memos providing legal cover; to the CIA officials, who implemented the abuses and misled Congress and the public; and to the military psychologists, who helped devise the techniques inflicted on prisoners at U.S. military prisons and secret black sites across the globe.

AMYGOODMAN: To talk more about this, we’re joined now by two guests. Michael Ratner is back with us, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, chair of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights. CCR has been working with the European Center to file criminal complaints against Bush administration officials complicit in the use of torture. He’s also the author of The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book.

Martin Garbus is also back with us, one of the leading attorneys in the U.S. Time magazine calls him "one of the best trial lawyers in the country." National Law Journal has named him one of the country’s top 10 litigators.

We welcome you both back to Democracy Now! Yesterday we were talking to you both about Cuba; today we’re talking about all the news that has come out. Martin Garbus, should President Bush, should George Tenet, should Donald Rumsfeld, should Dick Cheney be put on trial for torture?

MARTINGARBUS: They should be. The bad thing about it is they all have a defense they can rely on: They have the defense of the lawyers’ opinions that were given to them—the opinions of Gonzales, Bybee and John Yoo. And unless you can pierce those decisions, you have a very tough time. It seems to me a prosecution that ends badly—and I think it would end badly in the United States—might not be one that will be brought. But what should happen is with respect to those lawyers. When Jay Bybee was elected to the court of appeals in 2002—was nominated and then voted upon by the Senate—and John Yoo presently teaches at Berkeley university. At the—

AMYGOODMAN: At University of California, Berkeley, law school.

MARTINGARBUS: California. At the time that Yoo was appointed to Berkeley, there was a mass demonstration of students against him. At the time that Bybee was nominated for the judgeship by Bush, he was criticized, but you did not yet have all this information. What Senator Leahy has said, that if you had all this information, Jay Bybee never would have passed. Clearly, if you had all this information that you have now, John Yoo wouldn’t be appointed. What should happen is there should be complaints filed in the bar associations. They should be suspended and disbarred. Then, perhaps, if you have a prosecution, you already have established the faultiness, the horrific faultiness, of the legal opinions. So it seems to me, at least in this country, a condition precedent, as we lawyers say, before you can have a prosecution, has to be the invalidation of the legal opinions.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And—

MICHAELRATNER: I want to just say, I’m not here to debate Marty on this. And he’s a defense lawyer. But I strongly disagree that Bush, Cheney, et al., would have a defense. This wasn’t like these memos just appeared independently from the Justice Department. These memos were facilitated by the very people—Cheney, etc.—who we believe should be indicted. This was part of a conspiracy so they could get away with torture. But that’s not the subject here now. I just want to—so, that is clear to me.

Secondly, whatever we think of those memos, they’re of uselessness in Europe. Europe doesn’t accept this, quote, "golden shield" of a legal defense. Either it’s torture or it’s not. Either you did it or you didn’t. And that’s one of the reasons, among others, why we’re going to Europe and why we went to Europe to bring these cases through the European Center.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But I wanted to ask you about that, because—as the clip we played of President Obama saying it’s no use refighting old arguments, but you are in essence refighting arguments in Europe that the United States refuses to deal with.

MICHAELRATNER: But, of course, you know, Cheney just showed us exactly why you have to—have to prosecute torture. Because if you don’t prosecute it, the next guy down the line is going to torture again. And that’s what Cheney said: "I would do it again."

And now, the European case is really interesting. We did try this in 2004—you covered it here. We tried it in 2006—you covered it here. But now, because of the Senate report, we have a much stronger case in Germany than we ever had, particularly with regard to a German citizen, Khalid El-Masri, who was taken off the streets of Macedonia, sent to the Salt Pit, which is known as Cobalt in the Senate report.

AMYGOODMAN: Wait, explain, though.

MICHAELRATNER: Yeah, yeah.

AMYGOODMAN: Tell us that story. It’s a remarkable story. He was on a bus?

MICHAELRATNER: He was on a bus to take a vacation in Skopje in Macedonia, and he gets pulled off by agents of our government, gets taken off the bus, gets, you know, sodomized, essentially, with a drug, and then gets taken from there to the Salt Pit in Afghanistan, which is a CIA black site torture center, known as Cobalt in the report. He’s there for four months. Everybody knows by—at some point along, this is a mistake. There was another guy with a similar name. It wasn’t this guy. Even after they’re told that it’s a mistake, they leave him in there, and they leave him to be tortured. They finally, at the end of this, just take him out of there, and they drop him off somewhere—

AMYGOODMAN: Condoleezza Rice was involved with this, right?

MICHAELRATNER: Condoleezza Rice, and so was this woman—

AMYGOODMAN: They held him further because they realized they had been torturing the wrong man.

MICHAELRATNER: That’s correct. And the European Court of Human Rights actually weighed in on this case. And what they did is they held Macedonia liable for allowing that kidnapping on their streets, and fined them. And they found that what happened to him on the streets of Macedonia was torture. So—

AMYGOODMAN: Who else was involved?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, we—I want to go to Khalid El-Masri in his own words, describing his time inside a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan.

KHALID EL-MASRI: [translated] I was the only one in this prison in Kabul who was actually treated slightly better than the other inmates. But it was known among the prisoners that other prisoners were constantly tortured with blasts of loud music, exposed to constant onslaughts of loud music. And they were—for up to five days, they were just sort of left hanging from the ceiling, completely naked in ice-cold conditions. The man from Tanzania, whom I mentioned before, had his arm broken in three places. He had injuries, trauma to the head, and his teeth had been damaged. They also locked him up in a suitcase for long periods of time, foul-smelling suitcase that made him vomit all the time. Other people experienced forms of torture whereby their heads were being pushed down and held under water.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was Khalid El-Masri describing his torture in a CIA black site. Michael?

MICHAELRATNER: Well, yes, and they knew he was innocent. And there’s a woman who was just identified—who has been identified for a long time, who works for the CIA. Her name is Bikowsky, Alfreda Frances Bikowsky, who apparently was one of the people who insisted, even though there was people in the agency saying that "We’ve got the wrong guy," who insisted on having him picked up and taken there. She’s also, apparently, one of the models for the woman in Zero Dark Thirty. And Jane Mayer recently wrote an article about her; it’s, I think, called "The Queen of Torture" or something like that ["The Unidentified Queen of Torture"]—didn’t identify her by name. But she is one of the defendants in the lawsuit in Germany.

And let me just say, Germany—whatever happened before, between the NSA spying on Germany and the fact that their citizen has now been revealed to have been kept in a torture place, when it was known that he was innocent, I’m pretty sure that Germany is going to take this very seriously.

And I just spoke to a person you’ve had on here before, Scott Horton, who’s the columnist for Harper’s, as well as an expert on national security, and Scott tells me that because of these cases we have filed in Europe, that over a hundred CIA agents have been given advice that they should not leave the United States. Let me just say, what we’re going to win here in the end, I can’t say, but that already to me is a major victory.

MARTINGARBUS: A major victory would be to prosecute the lawyers themselves—

AMYGOODMAN: Martin Garbus.

MARTINGARBUS: —because otherwise what’s going to happen in the future is you’re going to have activities, like Cheney or whomever, you’ll have people in the CIA and the NSA relying on faulty legal opinion. So I think a strong emphasis in the United States has to be stop future lawyers from doing the same thing as was done here.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And your point is that these memos, they consciously knew that they were violating torture statutes.

MARTINGARBUS: They consciously knew. And I think Michael is right, of course, that they were doing it under the chain of command—Cheney and the other people. But I think that’s very difficult to prove, and I think you should go after the lawyers immediately now.

AMYGOODMAN: And, of course, since that time, John Yoo is an eminent professor at University of California, Berkeley, law school, and Bybee—